Ground Vehicle Strikes Southwest Jet at Memphis Airport During Boarding, No Injuries Reported

A ground equipment vehicle made contact with a Southwest Airlines jet at Memphis International Airport on Sunday, June 21, 2026, forcing the airline to swap aircraft and sending passengers to their destination hours behind schedule.

Southwest confirmed the incident to Fox News Digital. The affected plane, operating as Flight 4013, was immediately taken out of service after the contact. No injuries were reported among passengers, crew, or ground workers.

What Happened

Passengers were mid-boarding when the ground vehicle struck the aircraft. Memphis Shelby County Airport Authority called it "an isolated incident" in its own statement, also provided to Fox News Digital. The airport offered no additional detail on what type of ground equipment was involved or how the contact occurred.

Southwest directed passengers onto an alternate aircraft. A Southwest spokesperson told Fox News the replacement plane would operate the route to Dallas, but Southwest's own website listed Flight 4013 as continuing service to McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. Southwest did not publicly clarify which destination information was correct.

Passengers departed roughly four hours behind schedule, according to Fox News. The flight had been set to arrive at 1:50 p.m. but was rescheduled to arrive around 5:30 p.m.

Safety Investigation

Southwest said the incident will be reviewed through its Safety Management System. "Nothing is more important to Southwest than the Safety of its Customers and Employees," the airline said in its statement.

Ground vehicle strikes on parked or boarding aircraft are not rare in commercial aviation, though they are rarely catastrophic. The Federal Aviation Administration tracks ramp incidents as part of broader ground safety programs. Whether the FAA will be formally notified of this particular contact depends on the extent of any structural damage to the aircraft, which Southwest has not yet disclosed publicly.

Ground Operations Risk

Ground operations are statistically one of the more hazardous phases of commercial aviation, and critics of airline and airport safety culture argue that ramp incidents are chronically underreported and under-investigated. When no one gets hurt, these events often get treated as paperwork rather than near-misses worth scrutinizing seriously. Ground strikes can cause structural damage that isn't immediately visible, and the airworthiness of a plane contacted by heavy equipment needs a thorough inspection before that aircraft ever flies again.

Southwest pulling Flight 4013 from service immediately is the right call, and the airline saying it will run the incident through its Safety Management System is the standard process. Whether that process produces a meaningful corrective action or gets filed away is the part passengers cannot verify from the outside.

This incident also follows a separate ground-vehicle strike at Chicago's airport in which a tug vehicle driver was hospitalized after an airplane wing made contact, a case Fox News referenced in its coverage. That incident involved injuries; this one did not. The two events are unrelated, but the pattern across airports points to a persistent ground operations risk that the industry and regulators have been working to address for years.

What Comes Next

Southwest has not said whether the damaged aircraft sustained any structural harm or how long it will remain out of service. The airline's investigation through its Safety Management System is described as underway as of Sunday, June 21, 2026. If the inspection finds structural damage, the FAA could require an airworthiness review before the plane returns to service. Southwest has not set a public timeline for completing that review.