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Southwest grounds 41 Jets for "Safety related" issues.

by Grant Martin (RSS feed) on Mar 12th 2008 at 4:40PM

Remember the hubbub last week about Southwest Airlines purportedly flying airplanes sans proper safety inspections? Well the problem wasn't as bad as most media outlets (and politicians) made it sound, but most people agree that there was a bit of an oversight in the testing methods.

Once the airline routed out the bad apples (three employees were put on leave) and hired outside consultants to review their safety measures, they started going back to their maintenance records and inspecting their planes. In the course of their investigation, they determined that 44 of their 188 aircraft needed to be analyzed, five of which were already out for maintenance and one of which was already retired.

Before you flip out, Congressman Oberstar, this doesn't necessarily mean that the 38 in the skies were going to burst into flames somewhere over Oklahoma, just that a small section of fuselage skin hadn't recently been checked for flaws. None of the aircraft so far have been found unfit to fly, and Southwest expects to have all aircraft operational by tonight. Until then, you can expect a few flights to be out of schedule, but by the time you read this the inspections will probably already be done.

You can read an article, complete with incorrect data from CBS11 TV, or check out the Newswire post below.

Filed under: Airlines, News, Consumer Activism

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

KenC Mar 12th 2008 9:55PM

Well, it may not be a big deal, but only just last week on your blog, SW PR flack Paula Berg said all the missed inspections were done and taken care of last March, a year ago, which of course has now been shown to be a falsehood.

This is what she posted last week:

The inspections in question were one of many routine, redundant, and overlapping inspections of our fleet. And, as you and the WSJ point out, we discovered the missed inspection ourselves, informed the FAA, and promptly completed the missed inspections in March 2007. The FAA approved our actions and considered the matter closed as of April 2007.

Musician Mar 16th 2008 7:42AM

KenC ... not exactly.

The planes that were take out of service for inspection were not the same planes and the issue was not the same.

Southwest decided, because of their own internal investigation, to reinspect them based on an ambiguity in documentation. Repairs were made on a few (four I think) but no safety of flight issues were reported, and you can believe Southwest is reporting everything they find in their current situation.

I am flying Southwest several times next week, and I have zero concern about their safety.

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