Southwest Airlines Flight 3663
Boeing 737-8H4 · Accident: cabin safety event while standing
From Salt Lake City International Airport (KSLC) to Denver International Airport (KDEN)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA17CA005
- 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
- Unknown
Boeing 737-8H4
- 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
- N8324A
- Operator
- Southwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salt Lake City International Airport (KSLC), Salt Lake City, UTTo Denver International Airport (KDEN), Denver, CO
- Aircraft age
- About 4 years (built 2012)
- 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
- Standing · engine(s) not 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
- Cabin safety event
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On October 5, 2016, at about 1725 MDT, Southwest Airlines flight 3663, Boeing B737-800, N8324A, after arrival into Denver International Airport (KDEN), Denver, Colorado, the "B" position flight attendant lost her balance while retrieving her carryon bag from an overhead bin. The flight attendant fell against a seat arm rest near her right rib area. She was examined by paramedics and later escorted to a local hospital for further evaluation. An X-ray identified the flight attendant had sustained a fractured rib. The flight was operated as a 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 domestic passenger flight from Salt Lake City International Airport (KSLC) , Salt Lake City, Utah, with 2 pilots, 4 flight attendants and 173 passengers on board.
After the event, the injured flight attendant stated they had finished their day in Denver and while retrieving her bag from the overhead bin she stepped back and lost her balance. She thought her foot may have caught on the bar underneath a seat. She fell onto a row of seats making contact with an arm rest. She heard a crack in her rib area and it was difficult to breathe. The "C" flight attendant got help, the crew came back and paramedics were called.
Probable cause
the flight attendant losing her balance as she was removing her carry-on baggage resulted in her falling against an arm rest causing the serious injury.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA17CA005
- Event ID
- 20161011X51744
- Case number
- DCA17CA005
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: c4020d8819443b5f3d7ec7659b28016147bffc32cff75bf4814d71e1f0c3b67f; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:22:46.650Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. Narrative gives the departure airport as Salt Lake City International Airport (KSLC).