Southwest Caught Flying Under the Radar

Posted by scotty777...

As oil prices continue to rise expect to hear more horror stories like this from the FAA. The temptation for airlines to cut corners will become more prevalent as the price of Jet-A fuel goes up and profits go down. In this case, even though the FAA inspector looked the other way, the airline itself knew it should have taken these planes off line. They “self disclosed” most likely to avoid and even bigger public relations headache. No matter which way they try to spin it they knew these planes should NOT have been given a green light to fly.

(WASHINGTON) — The Federal Aviation Administration proposed a record penalty, $10.2 million, against Southwest Airlines on Thursday because, it said, the carrier had misled officials about whether it kept flying older Boeing 737 planes for several days last year after failing to inspect them for cracks in the fuselage.

At least one F.A.A. employee was aware of Southwest’s misrepresentation, an agency spokeswoman, Diane Spitalieri said, and told the airline that it could keep flying the 737s but should inspect them as soon as possible. A supervisor at the F.A.A. who was aware of the arrangement has been removed from that job, the spokeswoman said.

Southwest declared Thursday that it should not be fined because it had the F.A.A.’s concurrence when it continued to fly the incompletely inspected planes.

The inspector general of the Transportation Department is investigating the F.A.A.’s handling of the episode at the request of the chairman of the House Transportation Committee.

Ms. Spitalieri said that four of the planes turned out to have four-inch cracks, big enough to require repairs, though no problems occurred when they were in use.

“They knowingly flew those aircraft,” she said. “They knew they shouldn’t be.”

The airline said that it had found “the start of small cracking” on six planes. … More

So just remember this story the next time you stand in their A B C waiting lines to board their friendly flights or read this Mission Statement in the seat pocket in front of you: The mission of Southwest Airlines is dedication to the highest quality of Customer Service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and Company Spirit.

If that doesn’t calm your anxiety you can read their Customer Service Committment for laughs and see if this makes you feel any better about their rolling the dice placing perhaps a few thousand lives at risk. What on earth could have been their rational? Ensuring they met their flight schedules to maintain customer satisfaction? Pretty disturbing wouldn’t you say?

While we scan for potential terrorists at the gate maybe we should also be scanning the brains of these airline executives that think they could hide behind the idea that an FAA supervisor said it was ok to fly them to justify what they knew was wrong!!

Posted by scotty777...

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