Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-7H4 accident
Boeing 737-7H4 · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Sangster International Airport (MKJS) to Orlando International Airport (KMCO)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA22LA001
- 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
- Instrument 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
- N254WN
- Operator
- Southwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sangster International Airport (MKJS), Montego BayTo Orlando International Airport (KMCO), Orlando, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 14 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
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A flight attendant, who was standing in the aft galley while securing the cabin, was injured when the flight encountered turbulence during descent. According to the flight crew, there was a significant area of weather over the Florida peninsula, so they directed the flight attendants to secure the cabin early and take their seats for the remainder of the flight. While they were securing the cabin, the flight encountered an area of moderate convective turbulence lasting about 30 seconds. When the turbulence was encountered, the “B” position flight attendant was seriously injured after being thrown down and striking the aft galley floor hard. The captain was not told of any injuries at the time of the event. The flight attendant was later diagnosed with a compression fracture of the L1 vertebra spine along with other back injuries including disc herniation and cervical, thoracic, and lumbar sprain.
Probable cause
An encounter with moderate turbulence during descent.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA22LA001
- Event ID
- 20211001104013
- Case number
- DCA22LA001
- 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, cause areas, 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: 8b580bc97ec39e1f8ecafd185d6cccfda4b0584c2f5aa7322fcc42e389a9823e; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:36:34.986Z.