Southwest Airlines Flight 1528
Boeing 737 7H4 · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Rhode Island T. F. Green International Airport (KPVD) to Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (KFLL)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's date. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA16CA077
- 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 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
- N718SW
- Operator
- Southwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rhode Island T. F. Green International Airport (KPVD), Providence, RITo Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (KFLL), Ft. Lauderdale, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 18 years (built 1998)
- 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 January 15, 2016 at 6:15 pm eastern standard time, Southwest Airlines flight 1528, a Boeing 737-700, N718SW, encountered turbulence in the vicinity of Titusville, Florida during initial descent to Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport (FLL), Fort Lauderdale, Florida . Of the 144 passengers and crew members onboard, one flight attendant was seriously injured and the airplane was not damaged. The airplane was operating under 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121as a regularly scheduled passenger flight from T. F. Green Airport (PVD), Providence, Rhode Island. According to the operator, the flights routing passed east of Jacksonville, Florida over the Atlantic to the east of the Florida peninsula. A frontal system and jet stream stretched to the west and northwest of the flight's routing with turbulence forecast and reported on the western portions of the peninsula. The flight crew reported that they were in cruise at FL380 in smooth air but were aware of potential turbulence throughout the flight. Upon initial descent, the captain illuminated the fasten seat belt sign and advised the passengers to remain seated. While descending through approximately FL320, the airplane encountered turbulence in clear air lasting approximately 3 seconds. At the time of the turbulence encounter, two flight attendants (FA) were securing the aft galley for landing when one fell to the floor injuring her ankle. Medically trained passengers assisted the injured FA who could not complete her duties. The flight crew advised the FLL station of the event and requested medical assistance upon landing. The airplane landed at FLL with no further incident. The flight attendant was transported to the hospital where she was diagnosed with a broken ankle.
Probable cause
an inadvertent encounter with clear air turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA16CA077
- Event ID
- 20160129X24835
- Case number
- DCA16CA077
- 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: afc2882f06a26a75ef6e1b0271a21075fcbca32eeb34be6b0934022d745e1e88; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:07:27.222Z.