Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-8H4 accident
Boeing 737-8H4 · Accident: cabin safety event before flight
From Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (KPHX) to Buffalo Niagara International Airport (KBUF)
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
- DCA18CA209
- 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
- N8693A
- Operator
- Southwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (KPHX), Phoenix, AZTo Buffalo Niagara International Airport (KBUF), Buffalo, NY
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2016)
- 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
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On June 12, 2018, at about 1144 MST, Southwest Airlines 2344, Boeing 737-800, N8693A, the "B" position flight attendant was seriously injured when a pot of hot water she was holding splashed on her chest and face after a passenger exiting the lavatory bumped into her during boarding at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (KPHX), Phoenix, Arizona. There were two flight crew, 4 flight attendants, and unknown passengers on board at the time. The flight was operating under 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 as a regularly scheduled passenger flight from KPHX to Buffalo Niagara International Airport (KBUF), Buffalo, New York.
The injured flight attendant was unable to perform duties and was replaced. The injured flight attendant was transported to the hospital where she was diagnosed with second degree burns and released.
Probable cause
a passenger bumping into a flight attendant who was holding a hot liquid.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA18CA209
- Event ID
- 20180613X62240
- Case number
- DCA18CA209
- 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, coordinates, 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: 664da5e9e6f21aa2cb48f6aea9bacab658f6e189fd8dee39686385167579a885; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:28:02.658Z.