Southwest Airlines Flight 157
Boeing 737-8H4 · Accident: ground handling event before flight
From Pittsburgh International Airport (KPIT) to Denver International Airport (KDEN)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA19CA168
- 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 737-8H4
- 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
- N8608N
- Operator
- Southwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pittsburgh International Airport (KPIT), Pittsburgh, PATo Denver International Airport (KDEN), Denver, CO
- Aircraft age
- About 6 years (built 2013)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Physical
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 17, 2019, about 1020 eastern daylight time, Southwest Airlines flight 157, a Boeing 737-8H4, N8608N, was struck by a provisioning truck while loaded and ready for pushback at Pittsburgh International Airport (KPIT), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There were no injuries to the crew or passengers on board. The airplane received substantial damage. The regularly scheduled domestic passenger flight was operating under the provisions of Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 from KPIT to Denver International Airport (KDEN), Denver, Colorado. According to witnesses, the driver of the provisioning truck was unconscious when the truck impacted the airplane. The airplane received substantial damage to the left fuselage and internal structure.
Probable cause
a provisioning truck that impacted the airplane resulting in substantial damage.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA19CA168
- Event ID
- 20190617X11841
- Case number
- DCA19CA168
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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, cause areas. 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: 48e9b7e9051bcea4d27197d0b9624aeb85f58df4a0ccc60441286fbfa514b634; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:17:05.187Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. Narrative gives the destination as Denver International Airport (KDEN), Denver, Colorado.