Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-79P incident
Boeing 737-79P and Federal Express Boeing 767-32LF · Incident: runway incursion (vehicle, aircraft or person) during takeoff
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA23FA149
- 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
- Incident
- 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
Aircraft 1 · Boeing 737-79P
- 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
- N7827A
- Operator
- Southwest Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo MMEX · Cancun
- Aircraft age
- About 20 years (built 2003)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Runway incursion (vehicle, aircraft or person)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Aircraft 2 · Boeing 767-32LF
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 767
- 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
- N297FE
- Operator
- Federal Express
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Frederick W. Smith International Airport (KMEM), Memphis, TNTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 11 years (built 2012)
- 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 · IFR missed 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
- Near midair/TCAS alert/loss of separation
- 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
- Organizational issues › Support/oversight/monitoring
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On February 4, 2023, about 0640 central standard time, Southwest Airlines (SWA) flight 708, a Boeing 737-700, N7827A, and Federal Express Corporation (FedEx) flight 1432, a Boeing 767-300, N297FE, were involved in a runway incursion at Austin Bergstrom International Airport (AUS), Austin, Texas. The flight crew of the FedEx airplane, which was arriving on runway 18L, executed a missed approach as the SWA airplane was departing from the same runway. The 128 occupants aboard the SWA airplane and the 3 occupants aboard the FedEx airplane were not injured, and neither airplane sustained damage. SWA flight 708 was a regularly scheduled international passenger flight operating under Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 121 from AUS to Cancún International Airport (CUN), Cancún, Mexico. FedEx flight 1432 was a domestic cargo flight operating under Part 121 from Memphis International Airport (MEM), Memphis, Tennessee, to AUS. Night instrument meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the incident.
Probable cause
the local controller’s incorrect assumption that the Southwest Airlines (SWA) airplane would depart from the runway before the Federal Express airplane arrived on the same runway, which resulted in a loss of separation between both airplanes. Contributing to the controller’s incorrect assumption were his expectation bias regarding the SWA airplane’s departure, his lack of situational awareness regarding the SWA airplane’s position when the flight crew requested takeoff clearance, and the air traffic control tower’s lack of training (before the incident) on low visibility operations. Contributing to the incident was the SWA flight crewmembers’ failure to account for the traffic that was on short final approach and to notify the controller that they would need additional time on the runway before the takeoff roll. Also contributing to the incident was the Federal Aviation Administration’s failure to require surface detection equipment at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and direct alerting for flight crews.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA23FA149
- Event ID
- 20230205106680
- Case number
- DCA23FA149
- 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: 7b1114c014d476e7824e3fd35bfbab115863227214acc9683066997ccc3296e9; retrieved 2026-09-13T18:40:28.169Z.