Southwest Airlines Flight 681
Boeing 737 7H4 · Accident: ground handling event before flight
From Chicago Midway International Airport (KMDW) to Eppley Airfield (KOMA)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA18CA001
- 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
- N930WN
- Operator
- Southwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chicago Midway International Airport (KMDW), Chicago, ILTo Eppley Airfield (KOMA), Omaha, NE
- Aircraft age
- About 8 years (built 2009)
- 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
- Prior to flight
- 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 handling event
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft handling/service
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On October 2, 2017, at about 0840 CDT, Southwest Airlines flight 681, Boeing B737-700, N930WN, was struck by an unmanned tug while boarding was ongoing at Chicago Midway Airport (KMDW), Chicago, Illinois. There were no injuries to the 84 passengers and crew onboard. The airplane received substantial damage to the lower fuselage skin, frames and stringers over an area about 3 feet by 3 feet. The flight was operating under 14 Code of Federal Regulation Part 121 as a scheduled passenger flight from KMDW to Omaha Airport (KOMA), Omaha, Nebraska.
A ramp agent was driving a covered baggage tug with two baggage carts in tow between Gates B22 and B24 when the tug made contact with two staged baggage carts. The ramp agent jumped off the tug as the tug continued to accelerate forward. The now unmanned baggage tug struck additional ground support equipment before striking the fuselage of the accident airplane at Gate B22. The ramp agent stated afterwards that he could not get the tug to stop and thought running the tug into the staged baggage carts would stop or at least slow the tug down.
Examination of the baggage tug after the event revealed there was a mechanical failure of the fuel governor which resulted in the runaway. The runaway could have been stopped by either turning the ignition key off or using the manual shut down lever on the front cover. There was no guidance in the Ground Operations Training Manual related to how ramp personnel should handle mechanical failures of ground support equipment.
Probable cause
the mechanical failure of the tugs fuel governor, which made it difficult for the ramp agent to stop the tug. Contributing to the accident was the lack of guidance on how ground personnel were to handle vehicle malfunctions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA18CA001
- Event ID
- 20171003X23920
- Case number
- DCA18CA001
- 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. 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: 580f285584e22aaf751125ba4ee1827f2805ac8767ce7856eb7c01b726f1c97f; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:54:37.439Z.