Southwest Airlines Flight 48
Boeing 737 800 · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Kansas City International Airport (MCI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA23LA008
- 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
- 0
- 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 737 800
- 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
- N7881A
- Operator
- Southwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kansas City International Airport (MCI), Kansas City, MOTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 14 years (built 2008)
- 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
- 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
Southwest Airlines flight 48 encountered turbulence during cruise. One flight attendant sustained serious injuries. The airplane was not damaged. The regularly scheduled passenger flight was operating under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 from the Kansas City International Airport (MCI), Kansas City, Missouri, to the Denver International Airport (DEN), Denver, Colorado.
According to the flight attendant, as she was pouring coffee into cups while in the front galley, the airplane encountered very light turbulence which she described as a ‘very light bump’. During the event, the coffee pot flipped over and spilled coffee onto the back of her hand, resulting in 2nd degree burns. After the event, the captain called back to the cabin to apologize for the turbulence and advised that it was unexpected. The flight attendant continued duties after the event, and there was no further turbulence.
Prior to the flight, the captain discussed the possibility of turbulence during the preflight briefing, however the turbulence associated with the event was unannounced and unexpected.
Probable cause
An encounter with clear air turbulence during cruise flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA23LA008
- Event ID
- 20221006106083
- Case number
- DCA23LA008
- 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, 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: 00921e10150d8e4e1840443e1457625d3788d33e3cd960de41d87e778797ad5c; retrieved 2026-09-16T16:12:47.925Z.