Southwest Flight 28 Encounters Drone on Final Approach to Dallas Love Field

On June 5, 2015, Southwest Airlines Flight 28 was approaching Dallas Love Field after a flight from Houston when the crew reported a small quadcopter near the aircraft. The Federal Aviation Administration said the drone passed a few hundred feet from the left wing while the Boeing 737 was on a one-mile final approach.

The encounter was close enough to draw the attention of both the flight crew and the tower. According to the FAA, a controller in the Love Field tower also saw the unmanned aircraft and notified the Dallas Police Department. The sighting therefore was not based solely on an unconfirmed report from the flight crew.

Despite the proximity of the drone, the Southwest crew did not need to take evasive action. Flight 28 continued its approach and landed without incident. The aircraft was not reported damaged and no injuries were reported in contemporary reportings reviewed.

After the sighting, landing traffic at Love Field was moved to the airport’s east runway while a Dallas police helicopter searched the area. The search did not locate the drone or its operator. The FAA said it was investigating the incident.

The event is notable because it involved an unmanned aircraft in the immediate approach environment of a passenger jet. The available reports establish the proximity and the response, but they do not identify the operator or provide a confirmed reason for the drone being there.

Flight 28 did not need to maneuver to avoid the drone. The FAA told CBS News and Reuters that the pilot took no evasive action and the aircraft landed without incident. That outcome should not be confused with the absence of a hazard: the reported separation was only a few hundred feet during a passenger aircraft’s final approach.

The public record does not identify who was operating the drone, how high it was being flown, or why it was present near the approach path. Those gaps matter because the available sources establish the encounter and response but do not establish the operator’s intentions. The documented facts stop short of the operator’s intentions, which remain unknown.

The event occurred in 2015, when reports of small unmanned aircraft near airports were becoming an increasingly visible aviation-safety issue. Reuters reported that the FAA and Dallas police were trying to determine who was flying the drone. That investigation status is the appropriate endpoint for the incident record available here; no later identification of the operator is established by the sources used .