Southwest Airlines Flight 3118
Boeing 737 76N · Accident: birdstrike on approach
From San Antonio International Airport (SAT) to Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA15CA037
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Boeing 737 76N
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 737
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N7710A
- Operator
- Southwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Antonio International Airport (SAT), San Antonio, TXTo Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI), Baltimore, MD
- Aircraft age
- About 9 years (built 2005)
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 121: Air Carrier
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Approach
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Birdstrike
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On December 12, 2014, about 2030 eastern standard time, Southwest Airlines flight 3118, a Boeing 737-76N, registration N7710A, encountered multiple bird strikes while on approach to Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, Baltimore, Maryland. None of the passengers or crew members were injured and the airplane sustained substantial damage. The flight was operating under the provisions of 14 CFR Part 121 as a domestic passenger flight and originated from San Antonio International Airport, San Antonio, Texas.
The captain stated that while descending through about 2,500 feet on approach to land the airplane struck multiple birds. Inspection of the airplane after landing reveled substantial damage to the 178 forward pressure bulkhead and left wing fixed leading edge main rib.
Probable cause
an inadvertent encounter with birds during approach to land that resulted in substantial damage.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA15CA037
- Event ID
- 20141217X43728
- Case number
- DCA15CA037
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2014-12-13.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 84939b461126162f17cf3698d6dc62f71168545cd8a105ced241abbac741687c; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:59:08.073Z.