Southwest Airlines Flight 2437
Boeing 737 7L9 · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Chicago Midway International Airport (MDW) to Manchester-Boston Regional Airport (MHT)
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
- DCA19CA207
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Boeing 737 7L9
- 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
- N7816B
- Operator
- Southwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chicago Midway International Airport (MDW), Chicago, ILTo Manchester-Boston Regional Airport (MHT), Manchester, NH
- Aircraft age
- About 19 years (built 1999)
- 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 October 15, 2018, about 1310 eastern daylight time, Southwest Airlines flight 2437, a Boeing 737-7L9, N7816B, encountered turbulence while descending through about FL280. As a result of the turbulence, one flight attendant received serious injuries. The remaining passengers and crew were not injured, and the airplane was not damaged. The regularly scheduled passenger flight was operating under the provisions of Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 from Chicago Midway International Airport (KMDW), Chicago, Illinois, to Manchester-Boston Regional Airport (KMHT), Manchester, New Hampshire. The flight crew stated that prior to encountering turbulence the seat belt sign had been illuminated, and the flight attendants had been asked to be seated since turbulence was anticipated. The flight crew stated that upon entering a “benign-looking” cloud formation the airplane encountered continuous moderate to heavy turbulence for about 20 to 30 seconds. The flight attendants (FA) stated that soon after receiving the call to be seated, the flight encountered turbulence and the FA in the aft galley was thrown against the door and cabinets, and then onto the floor, injuring her right foot. After landing the FA was transported to a local hospital and diagnosed with a broken right foot.
Probable cause
an encounter with convective turbulence that resulted in a serious injury to a flight attendant.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA19CA207
- Event ID
- 20181016X60635
- Case number
- DCA19CA207
- 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: 6c30e1c4106d4b15865ef57dd14728ab186299dc4aa7a4740af4326ad428416d; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:21:09.575Z.