Southwest Airlines Flight 975
Boeing 737 7H4 · Accident: birdstrike on approach
From Pittsburgh International Airport (KPIT) to Nashville International Airport (KBNA)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA19CA130
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
- N249WN
- Operator
- Southwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pittsburgh International Airport (KPIT), Pittsburgh, PATo Nashville International Airport (KBNA), Nashville, TN
- Aircraft age
- About 13 years (built 2006)
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Birdstrike
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On March 27, 2019 at 7:25pm central daylight time (EDT), a Boeing 737-700, N249WN, operated by Southwest Airlines as flight 975 struck a bird with the left horizontal stabilizer while descending through 2,500 feet on approach to the Berry-Nashville International Airport (KBNA), Nashville, Tennessee. The airplane landed at KBNA with no further incident. There were no injuries and the airplane was substantial damaged. The regularly scheduled passenger flight was operating under the provisions of 14 CFR Part 121 from the Pittsburgh International Airport (KPIT), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to KBNA.
Damage to the airplane included a 12 inch crack in the forward spar, requiring replacement of the horizontal stabilizer. Bird residue was sent to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History laboratory, and identified as a Great Blue Heron.
Probable cause
a collision with a bird.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA19CA130
- Event ID
- 20190401X22803
- Case number
- DCA19CA130
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2019-03-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8393fd1e0c1a3bf3bcd000407bcef78eccbf229f6c866b9c562b9011b013fbde; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:42:35.439Z.