!!!!!!!!!! Don't FLY SOUTHWEST AIRLINES !!!!!!!!!!

[MoneyInTheBank]

FAA proposes record $10 mln fine for Southwest Air

By John Crawley
39 minutes ago



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. aviation regulators on Thursday proposed to fine Southwest Airlines Co a record $10.2 million for allegedly failing to inspect planes for structural cracks.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said Southwest continued to fly uninspected aircraft even after the carrier notified the agency that it had missed a mandatory deadline to complete the work.

"The FAA is taking action against Southwest Airlines for a failing to follow rules that are designed to protect passengers and crew," said Nicholas Sabatini, the agency's associate administrator for safety.

The FAA said there were no safety incidents related to the missed inspections of Boeing Co 737 aircraft but the allegations and the fine amounted to a startling mark against the airline that has been an industry model for efficient operation for nearly 40 years.

The airline said in a statement late on Wednesday the inspections were routine and redundant. Southwest said it acted promptly and responsibly and that flight safety was never compromised.

Southwest shares fell 49 cents, or nearly 3.8 percent, to $12.50 on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock rose slightly after hours before retreating to its closing price.

Southwest is the biggest U.S. carrier by market value at $9.5 billion.

UNINSPECTED PLANES

Southwest flies only 737 planes and the inspection program was part of an industry-wide FAA initiative to more closely examine structural fatigue in all types of older planes. Most big U.S. airlines are slowly modernizing their fleets.

While commercial jetliners are built to fly for decades, the repetitive fuselage inspections imposed in 2004 are aimed at finding any minor skin cracks or other structural issues that occur with heavy use and usually can be fixed easily.

But the FAA asserted that Southwest operated 46 planes on nearly 60,000 flights while "failing to comply" with the inspection requirement between June 2006 and March 2007.

The carrier continued for eight days to operate the same planes on more than 1,400 additional flights after discovering last March that it missed the inspection deadline, the FAA said. This breach, the FAA said, prompted the heavy fine.

Cracks were found on six planes after the inspections were completed, the FAA said.

Southwest said in a statement that it acted promptly once it discovered the lapse. The carrier also said it consulted Boeing about the missed inspections as well as the continued operation of those aircraft for up to 10-days while the work was completed.

Southwest said Boeing concluded the compliance plan was technically valid. "In Boeing's opinion, the safety of the Southwest fleet was not compromised."

A Boeing official confirmed the consultation.

Southwest said the FAA "approved our actions and considered the matter closed as of April 2007."

FAA ROLE QUESTIONED

Questions were also raised about the FAA's role and whether its oversight was insufficient. Congressional lawmakers want to know why it took so long for the FAA to act and why uninspected planes were not grounded immediately.

The House of Representatives Transportation Committee is investigating and the panel's chairman, Rep. James Oberstar, a Minnesota Democrat, has scheduled a news conference for Friday. A hearing is planned for April.

Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington state Democrat and chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that funds FAA operations, called the safety violations "grotesque" and an "inexcusable lapse."

Murray was critical of the airline but also promised to hold FAA officials responsible.

"We need to ask serious questions as to why it took the FAA so long to discover them," she said.

The FAA said is sending a team of inspectors -- those that do not normally work closely with Southwest at its base in Dallas -- to review the maintenance program. Airlines overall are complying with the timelines for completing structural inspections, the agency said.

Southwest can appeal the proposed fine, which would be the largest ever against an airline if enforced. The largest to date is a $9.5 million penalty against Eastern Airlines in the 1980s.

(Reporting by John Crawley; editing by Carol Bishopric and Braden Reddall)

 

[pking]

Fuck it better than flying Sprit Air, tiny ass planes had me walk on the tarmac to get to the damn plane

 

[Jaguar2G]

a co worker was tellin me about this today.......

Anyone who recently flew Southwest Airlines should sue, for putting their life in danger.

 

[the_monsterous_monster]

I flew that shit from Oakland to L.A.

 

[ak_rep]

Sheit.

SW Airlines is one of the best things ever to happen to the West Coast.

Good look though.

 

[jagu]

Better yet, sell their stocks now if you invested in them!

 

[goldeneye]

damn. good looking out. never flew southwest, but being from houston they are always advertising here. I considered them even today when i saw a commercial. guess i'm sticking with continental/aa/delta for the time being.

 

[The Black HHH]

This needs to be bumped.

DALLAS — Federal regulators said Thursday they will seek a civil penalty of $10.2 million — the largest ever — against Southwest Airlines for failing to inspect older planes for cracks and then flying them before inspections were done.

The FAA said Southwest operated nearly 60,000 flights in 2006 and 2007 using 46 planes that had missed inspections for possible fatigue-related cracking on the fuselage areas.

The airline flew another 1,451 flights with the same planes in March 2007, even after discovering that it had failed to conduct the required inspections, the FAA charged. All but $200,000 of the proposed penalty dealt with those later flights.

Southwest said six of the planes had small cracks that required repairs.

The agency had ordered airlines in September 2004 to conduct inspections of some areas of the fuselage on some older models of Boeing 737 aircraft once every 4,500 flights.

"The FAA is taking action against Southwest Airlines for a failing to follow rules that are designed to protect passengers and crew," said Nicholas A. Sabatini, the agency's associate administrator for safety. "We expect the airline industry to fully comply with all FAA directives and take corrective action."

The airline said Thursday it had complied with regulators' requests and would contest any penalty. The airline has 30 days to respond to the FAA.

The aim of the FAA's 2004 directive was to make sure airline crews found and repaired small cracks before they became large enough to pose a safety hazard.

A spokeswoman for Southwest, Beth Harbin, said the airline brought the issue to the FAA's attention and believed it had handled the matter to the agency's satisfaction. Harbin said the airline believed the case was closed last year.

"We brought in 46 airplanes to take another look at them," Harbin said. "These are preventive inspections. On six of the 46 we found the start of some very small cracking. That's the intent of the inspection schedule — to find something before it becomes a problem. These are safe planes."

Harbin said Southwest got Boeing's opinion that flying the planes for up to 10 days until they could be inspected again did not compromise safety.

The FAA itself has come under fire for the Southwest case. A congressional committee and the Transportation Department's inspector general are looking into why the FAA didn't ground the planes when it learned of the missed inspections a year ago.

Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said he got information from whistle-blowers indicating that an FAA inspector let Southwest operate flights before properly inspecting the planes. A hearing on that matter was scheduled for next week but has been postponed until April.

FAA regulations require that airplanes be grounded if a mandatory inspection has been missed, until the work can be performed.

The FAA could have sought a penalty of $25,000 per violation, or up to $36 million, according to a person close to the situation and who spoke on condition of anonymity. The person said the higher penalties were unlikely, partly because the agency must consider the company's ability to pay.

Airlines are under heavy financial pressure because of high fuel costs.

Thomas Anthony, a former FAA inspector who now directs the aviation safety program at the University of Southern California, said that if Southwest operated flights with planes that should have been inspected, "we have to ask how effective are the airline's internal controls. What decisions allowed them to continue to operate" those planes.

Joseph Gutheinz Jr., a former FAA and Transportation Department inspector, said penalties against airlines that violate FAA directives should be stiffer.

At $25,000 per violation, Gutheinz said, airlines "can justify rolling the dice and taking the chance" on getting caught. He also said the FAA is often too quick to bend to pressure from airlines and pilots.

The FAA has issued several directives to airlines regarding the inspection of fuselages dating back to a horrific accident in 1988 in which the roof of an Aloha Airlines 737 peeled open during flight, killing a flight attendant.

The largest civil penalty the FAA has ever imposed was $10 million, and the largest against an airline was $9.5 million about two decades ago against Eastern Airlines.

 

[MoneyInTheBank]

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