Gadling

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