United Airlines Flight 138
Boeing 757 224 · Accident: cabin safety event before flight
From Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) to Keflavik International Airport (BIKF)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA18CA299
- 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 757 224
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 757
- 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
- N13113
- Operator
- United Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR), Newark, NJTo Keflavik International Airport (BIKF), Reykjavik
- Aircraft age
- About 23 years (built 1995)
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On September 23, 2018, at about 2145 EDT, United flight 138, Boeing B757-224, N13113, was in the process of boarding at Newark International Airport (EWR), Newark, New Jersey when a flight attendant was struck by a catering cart. Of the 177 passengers and crew who were scheduled to be onboard, one flight attendant was seriously injured. The flight was scheduled as a 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 international passenger flight from EWR to Reykjavik-Keflavak International Airport (KEF), Keflavak, Iceland.
During the initial boarding process, the resupplying of the catering was still ongoing. As the caterer personnel was quickly pushing a catering cart throught the aisle the flight attendant's foot was struck by the cart as it passed by. The flight attendant was injured, but thought his foot was only bruised, so he remained onboard to work the flight. During the flight, the flight attendant's foot became more painful, which required him to elevate his foot for short periods of time. After arrival at KEF, the injured flight attendant went to a local hospital and was diagnosed with a fractured heel.
Probable cause
the catering cart striking the flight attendant's foot.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA18CA299
- Event ID
- 20181009X10416
- Case number
- DCA18CA299
- 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, coordinates, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2018-09-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 41131c4ad3219bc0be43ddb9045de95b6b94a40a5ac3340f6d03ac65b5164659; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:19:03.366Z.