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FAA May Fine Southwest For Flying Uninspected Planes

Airline says safety wasn't compromised

March 7, 2008

The FAA proposed the fine, which would be a record, because it says Southwest did not follow agency rules.

Specifically, the FAA maintains that the airline continued to use planes after it missed a mandatory deadline to have them inspected. The inspections were ordered to look for structural cracks in the fuselage of the Boeing 737 aircraft Southwest uses.

Southwest said the missed inspections were an oversight, and after discovering the error, the airline said it quickly reinspected all the aircraft for cracks. It says the inspections were mostly routine and redundant and that flight safety was never compromised.

The FAA-mandated inspections are designed to find tiny cracks in an aircraft's fuselage before they can get bigger and compromise the structural integrity of the plane. Since a modern jetliner may be used for 30 years or more, these inspections are supposed to find the kinds of problems than can occur as an aircraft ages.

Southwest's entire fleet is made up of Boeing 737s. The FAA alleges the company continued to use 46 of its planes, making nearly 60,000 flights, after missing the inspection window between June 2006 and March 2007.

In particular, the FAA said it learned that Southwest continued to operate uninspected planes for eight days in March 2007, after learning that it had failed to meet the inspection requirement. That, the agency says, is what brought about the record fine.

Without disputing the FAA's account, Southwest said it acted quickly once it discovered it had not completed the inspections and reported that fact to the FAA. Once the inspections were made, the FAA said six of the planes were found to have structural cracks.

Southwest said it did not ground the planes during the reinspection because consultations with Boeing led it to believe continuing to fly the planes would not pose a safety threat. The FAA said it would review Southwest's entire maintenance program.

The Boeing 737 is a short to medium range jet that entered service in 1968. It is the world's most widely used commercial passenger jet, and comprises Southwest's entire fleet.

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