Southwest Airlines Flight 154
Boeing 737 7H4 · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to San Jose, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA15CA050
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Boeing 737 7H4
- 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
- N481WN
- Operator
- Southwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Los Angeles, CATo San Jose, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 10 years (built 2004)
- 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
- En route · descent
- 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
- Turbulence encounter
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On December 11, 2014, about 0830 pacific standard time, Southwest Airlines flight 154, a Boeing B737-7H4, N481WN, encountered turbulence during descent into Norman Y. Mineta San José International Airport, San Jose, California (SJC). The flight was operating under the provisions of 14 CFR Part 121 as a domestic passenger flight that originated from Los Angeles International Airport, Los Angeles, California (LAX) to.
According to crew statements, the flight crew instructed the flight attendants (FA) to secure the cabin early due to anticipated storms and turbulence around SJC. The "B" FA stated that as she was cleaning the aft galley when the airplane experienced "several jolts" of turbulence. She indicated that, while turning to sit down on the aft jumpseat, she twisted her left foot. The FA further stated that she was able to perform all required duties through the remainder of the flight and thought she only had a mild sprain. She did not inform the flight crew or other FAs of her injury. After a week of continued pain and swelling she visited a podiatrist and was diagnosed with two fractured metatarsals in her left foot.
Probable cause
an inadvertent encounter with convective turbulence during descent.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA15CA050
- Event ID
- 20150116X52840
- Case number
- DCA15CA050
- 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: investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 65eef550f631a34e313d5c5ab0dd1434c323fe41c934c1cdbaf0996e5bce65e8; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:01:49.246Z.