Mar 13, 2008 12:32 am US/Pacific
Southwest Grounds Jets In Bay Area, Nationwide
OAKLAND (CBS 5 / AP / BCN) ―
Southwest Airlines grounded 41 planes nationwide Wednesday— about eight percent of its fleet—in the wake of its recent admission that it had missed required inspections of some planes for structural cracks.
Southwest said the move resulted in about four percent of its flights being canceled across the country on Wednesday. The airline said it expected to resume its normal schedule by Thursday.
At Oakland International Airport, five Southwest departures were canceled Wednesday morning, according to airport spokeswoman Cindy Johnson.
Mineta San Jose International Airport spokesman David Vossbrink said two Southwest flights, one departing from San Jose and one arriving at San Jose, were canceled Wednesday morning and an additional flight scheduled for the afternoon was canceled.
San Francisco International Airport spokesman Mike McCarron said
he was unaware of any Southwest cancellations at SFO.
Removing the 41 aircraft from service comes as Southwest faces a $10.2 million civil penalty for continuing to fly some planes after the airline told regulators that it had missed required inspections of them.
The Federal Aviation Administration, which announced the penalty last week, has also come under fire for failing to immediately ground the Southwest jets when it learned they had not been inspected for cracks in the fuselage.
The company said it had 520 Boeing 737 jets at the end of last year. Nearly 200 of them are older models, the Boeing 737-300, that were supposed to undergo extra inspections for cracks in the fuselage.
Southwest Chief Executive Gary Kelly had said he was concerned by findings from an internal investigation into the missed inspections. He announced that the Dallas, Texas-based company had placed three employees on paid leave while it investigated the situation.
Acting FAA Administrator Robert A. Sturgell called the events "a twofold breakdown in the aviation system"—first, Southwest's failure to properly inspect its planes; and the FAA's failure to ground the jets as "at least one FAA inspector looked the other way."
The $10.2 million penalty is the largest the FAA has ever imposed on a carrier. Southwest has said it will appeal.
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