Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 700 incident
Boeing 737 700 · Incident: ground collision during pushback
From San Diego International Airport (SAN) to Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15IA337
- 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
- Incident
- 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 737 700
- 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
- N779SW
- Operator
- Southwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Diego International Airport (SAN), San Diego, CATo Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC), San Jose, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 15 years (built 2000)
- 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
- Pushback/towing · engine operating
- 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
- Ground collision
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the pushback of a scheduled domestic passenger flight, the airplane's left wing collided with a provisioning truck, rolling the truck onto its side and resulting in minor damage to the airplane. The truck driver stated that he was waiting to service an inbound airplane at the adjacent gate and was likely parked within the safety zone of the incident airplane's gate. The gate lead/pushback driver for the incident airplane stated that he walked past the truck during the pre-pushback walk around but did not recall seeing the truck within the safety zone.
The gate lead reported problems with his headset and personal life stress. It is likely that the gate lead was distracted by both during his walk around. Additionally, a guide agent positioned at the airplane's right wing stated that he saw the provisioning truck but assumed that it was not an issue since the gate lead had conducted a walkaround before pushback.
Probable cause
The gate lead/pushback driver's failure to recognize that the provisioning truck was within the safety zone of the gate during his walkaround due to distractions, which resulted in the subsequent collision between the airplane and the truck. Contributing to the collision was the provisioning truck driver's failure to recognize he was parked in the safety zone of an active gate adjacent to his assigned gate, and the guide agent's improper assumption that the safety zone was properly cleared by the gate lead/pushback driver.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15IA337
- Event ID
- 20150805X75232
- Case number
- CEN15IA337
- 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 2015-08-05.
- API snapshot SHA-256: fb20b9be493e504f9967330ba974f8d9801f3885a6903187ac3cab20969b9ec7; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:37:45.748Z.