Southwest Airlines Flight 2046
Boeing 737-700 · Accident: cabin safety event en route
From Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (KOAK) to Bellingham International Airport (KBLI)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA22LA134
- 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 737-700
- 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
- N256WN
- Operator
- Southwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (KOAK), Oakland, CATo Bellingham International Airport (KBLI), Bellingham, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 16 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
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to a flight attendant (FA) on Southwest Airlines flight 2046, during cruise flight with no reported turbulence, she and several passengers noticed the forward lavatory was occupied for an unusually long time (10-15 minutes) requiring passengers to use the back lavatory. The FA realized the passenger had unlocked the lavatory door and cracked it open but did not exit. She knocked on the door and asked if everything was okay but there was no response. When the FA attempted to open the door, a female passenger started to exit the lavatory when she began to fall and grabbed on to the FA. The FA immediately requested for the front two passengers to assist her in getting the passenger up and moved to a seat. While assisting the passenger, the FA noticed the passenger’s foot was swollen and piece of bone was sticking through her skin. A volunteer medical professional who was onboard the airplane assisted and positioned the injured passenger in the front galley for landing. Emergency medical personnel met the airplane at the gate and transported the passenger to a local hospital.
Probable cause
During cruise flight with no reported turbulence a passenger sustained a serious injury for an unknown reason.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA22LA134
- Event ID
- 20220623105307
- Case number
- DCA22LA134
- 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 2022-05-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ad960e7ad8429706133417d439f3b87e2ecdaee82b056c77bd11e28681108c06; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:21:54.243Z.