Southwest Airlines Grounds Some Planes
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Let’s start off with what we DO know:
- Southwest Airlines has one of the best safety records of ANY
commercial airline.
- Southwest flies a fleet of only one type of aircraft – the
Boeing 737 (although various models and ages make up the total fleet of
over 500 aircraft).
- Southwest Airlines airplanes have traditionally had one of the
highest resale values in the industry. Southwest has one of the youngest
fleets, with an average airplane age of less than 9 years. There's
a major U.S. airline with over 100 DC-9s, (they stopped being
manufactured in 1983), so those planes are at least 25 years old (and
with the various model types we know that most are much older than
that).
- Southwest Airlines grounded some of its fleet (between 41 and 44
aircraft) today, March 12, 2008 to determine if "further"
inspections are needed.
Some things that are not clear:
- We know that Southwest missed mandatory inspections of some aircraft
and alerted the FAA to that fact in March 2007. After making that
announcement to the FAA they began the inspection process. The time
frame in which those late inspections occurred is still not absolutely
clear.
- We also know, and Southwest admits, that un-inspected aircraft were
used on some flights. It "appears" that some of these flights
(a relatively small percentage) even occurred after Southwest realized
that the inspection dates had been missed.
- Southwest advises that the FAA knew all of this and still allowed
the flights to continue. Unconfirmed comments from the FAA indicate that
a further inquiry into their own processes is needed. Rumors that the
FAA inspectors and Southwest's own inspectors were too "chummy"
are just that… rumors.
- Southwest says that Boeing advised that the issue requiring
inspections never compromised the fleet's safety.
- It's not currently known how long these safety inspections will
take, and if repairs are needed what effect that will have. Linda
Rutherford, spokesperson for Southwest Airlines, says that the airline
expects minimal disruptions to passengers as a result. And a
late-breaking release from Southwest advises that they hope to have all
inspections completed by this evening.
We certainly hope so, with Spring Break starting in just a few days and
Easter Weekend the following week, we'll need Southwest to be
operating at full capacity.
We know that the FAA dropped the ball on this one, and perhaps so did
Southwest Airlines. But Southwest took a cautious route once any ambiguity
in the inspection process was revealed. We are more convinced than ever
that Southwest is committed to safety. And we now know that all of their
aircraft have had inspections. What we don’t know is how many other
airlines have had their entire fleet recently inspected.
Tom Parsons, CEO and Founder of Bestfares.com (and a multi-million mile
flyer), when asked if he would fly Southwest Airlines right now said…
"In a New York minute."
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