Nuts About Southwest

On Saturday March 29th, Southwest Flight 2836 which was scheduled to leave its gate at Love Field at 4:20 PM CDT left the runway at 4:30 PM CDT. 9 minutes later at 4:39 PM CDT, the 737-700 aircraft experienced an engine problem (with only one of its two engines), as it approached Denison, TX. Even though a Boeing 737 CAN fly safely on one engine, because the remaining engine does not have a backup it is procedure to turnaround, because it is the SAFE thing to do. However, I hope that Southwest goes ahead and takes the opportunity to do a full inspection before returning this aircraft back to service and any other aircraft that should experience this problem as well. All data provided is available on Flightaware.com. There isn't a reason for Southwest won't be able to reform its maintance procedures and put this behind them.

As a smidgen of evidence that there may be a bit of a smear campaign being waged against Southwest Airlines, I'd like to offer the following tidbit for your contemplation.

When questions about inspections began to surface, the "Southwest story" was FRONT PAGE news here in Dallas and a number of other cities. It made the TV news networks as well. So, out of curiosity, how many of you heard the story about American Eagle grounding 25 of their jets last week over questions about whether they had met some FAA-mandated inspection guidelines?

The story seems similar to the one at SWA, except of course for the fact that the Southwest story was from last year, and the American Eagle one occurred last week. So, since it was old news, it needed to be trumpeted from the top of the front page. Recently, Southwest voluntarily grounded a portion of their fleet to insure compliance, and that, too, was front page fodder. Eagle did the same thing last week themselves, and to quote a portion of the article in the Dallas paper:

"Federal Aviation Administration officials in Fort Worth raised the questions during an audit to ensure compliance with airworthiness directives, which address potential safety problems."

Gee, I feel a sense of deja vu. But, I'm sure that in your town, it was as equally publicized as the situation involving Southwest Airlines, right? Let's see, where was in published in Dallas? On page 4 of the Business section. Counting the front page section, the Business portion is the fourth section. Four pages inside of the fourth section.

Hmmmmm -- I guess the front page section was full...

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/032508dnbuseagle...

Kim
External Blog Boy

As a consumer, it's a game of roulette as to which airline will next be exposed as non-compliant with maintenance schedules. Face it, federal inspectors just donÃ

To CharlieWest219 and my fellow supporters of SWA --
Thank you for your well-reasoned and intelligent comments regarding this current situation. As you have pointed out, and as many of the negative blog entries have verified by their tone, this has become an issue of emotions more than one of facts.

There is no question that much of the media relies on hype and sensationalism when they feel that it will serve their agenda, and that when mistakes made are egregious enough, they will print a retraction of the incorrect front page headline back on page 37. Right here in the hometown of Southwest, now that the damage has been done, the local paper has moved on to newer and other things to rail about. How easy it is to fire up a controversy and then just move on to another issue. Responsible reporting carries an obligation to get the facts right up front and then to keep your audience informed as the story continues to unfold.

As several bloggers have pointed out, Southwest Airlines, like every other company, is made up of people, and people make mistakes. It seems valid to examine whether incidents occur because of premeditated actions and shortcuts or because of unintended human errors. To make accusations of purposeful efforts to avoid costly inspections and secret agendas to knowingly put people's lives at risk is irresponsible at best and intensely paranoid at worst. Thanks to movie moguls like Oliver Stone, many folks have been encouraged to look for a conspiracy behind every incident.

In addition, you and others have correctly mentioned the inherent and redundant safety of today's airframes. The planes of today's fleets, and I believe Southwest's specifically, are some of the best maintained and inspected pieces of equipment in the air. It remains a very accurate statement to say that you are at much greater risk driving to the airport than you are flying. Many people outside the aviation industry try to raise the spectre of average age of the fleet for an airline without understanding the amount of upgrades, repairs and ongoing work is done to keep those planes safe. If people maintained their cars as well as airlines maintain their airplanes, we could still be driving automobiles from 1970.

In fact, during all of this hue and cry over airframe age, I don't see a similar concern for the members of our U. S. Air Force, who in some cases are flying planes that are over 40 or 50 years old. Our people in uniform are dealing with Congressional budget restraints that keep them in airframes that could be considered antiques compared to what Southwest has in the air. If you think some hairline cracks in a Boeing 737 are risky, consider the challenges of wings that are ready to fall off of some planes that entered the USAF fleet in the 1950s.

All of this excitement over the Southwest situation is also being made towards a company with the best safety record around. As you said above, that is not meant to excuse or trivialize events such as the unfortunate death at MDW, but based on cycles flown, or numbers of passengers, or quantity of flight segments per day over the last 37 years, Southwest has nothing to be ashamed of. You notice that all of this criticism towards SWA is coming from emotional passengers who believe that in hindsight they might have died. There is no other airline that is willing to stand up and point any fingers at Southwest because they know that their records are worse, and that to do so would invite greater scrutiny into their own procedures, which may not have been as rigorous as Southwest's.

The public has spent a lot of effort wailing and gnashing their teeth over Southwest and how something "could have happened", even though it didn't, but they fail to get equally emotional over crashes that DO happen. According to the lastest figures I can find just for the state of Texas, there were 170,190 alcohol-related car crashes in a year. That averages to 466 wrecks per day. In 2007, there were 1569 fatalities in Texas due to alcohol-related accidents. That would be equivalent to a fully-loaded Southwest 737 in the 137-pax configuration crashing with no survivors almost every month of the year (11.45 times to be precise). Where is the indignation over THAT?

If all of these concerned and highly-principled travelers truly intend to boycott any airline that does not have a perfect maintenance record and that has never missed any deadlines or required work, then our interstate highways are going to become even more crowded than they already are, because they will not be able to fly again.

Southwest is a great company run by excellent leaders who would not put the lives of their passengers, the lives of their employees or their public safety record at risk to save a few bucks. If you are looking around for a corporate culture of deceit, reckless disregard for safety and wanton evasion of legalities, you'd better look elsewhere. Southwest didn't become one of the most highly-desired places to work and a frequently-cited business model of success by being or doing what they are accused of by so many people.

Thanks to CharlieWest219 and the others who understand that!
Kim
External Blog Boy

All the rhetoric aside,, every company has its problems. Employees can be lazy and not understand that failure to do thier jobs completely can leave a huge hole in a well crafted puzzle. I trust that a company of 37 years knows where and how this occured. Their processes must be well groved after all these years and it must be easy to track where the failure started. Hence the firings. It may not seem like much to everyone, but the "root" started somewhere. I am sure those three employees know exactly what kind of issue they created and how it affects the company now. Be sure of this too,, the other employees do too. I don't think that SWA will allow this kind of behavior from any other employee again, given all the negative publicity and speculation about their devotion to safety. In addition,, after reading these blogs,, they are losing customers too. You may say that they don't care,, but these blogs are just a minute representation of the country as a whole. For every company publicly stating they are pulling out,, there must be thousands more that are doing it quietly. Not to mention the "fearful" everyday traveler.

I am still going to fly SWA every 6 weeks like I always do. Knowing that thier inspections are under scrutiny just makes me think they are going to be even more diligent about the condition of the planes.

I like thier new boarding process, convenient schedules and destinations.

I would like to say that I have seen a rapid decline in the attitude of the employees lately. I would like to see better attitudes from all of them... What I get is the feeling that "yea this is a cheap flight, so you need us more than we need you" I hope thats not true, but its been going on for at least the last 6 months. I had one such horrible flight with the rudest attendant,, that I almost stopped flying SWA. My husband convinced me that she was probably having a bad day, and she treated HIM badly, not me. I have a few friends that work for SWA and they say if you make a complaint, no one really does anything anyway and they somehow "single" you out later. I don't know if they are telling the truth or not. I try not to be that gullable.

Anyway SWA,,, unless you continue to have safety issues, I will still be flying. Try and get the attidues in check.. Thanks

i think SWA are doing the best they could to retrieve all the aircraft efficiently. it is scary to know that something like this happened and it is hard for us to trust that the planes will be in good condition for flights. however, SWA doesnt have any fatal accidents (not to jinx it) but other airlines have had accidents but people still get on their airlines SWA are doing the best they could to protect and assure us a safe flight.

This will only make it safer.

With that said, I hope that aircraft with original delivery dates prior to 1989 should be placed on an expedited, gradual retirement program. And if some of the specials are on the list. N334SW (Shamu I) is with a May 22nd 1988 delivery date. All of the others are younger. Hopefully an upcoming delivery
will come in Shamu colors so that 334 will get retired gracefully soon.

To those of you that are switching, EVEN WITH THE REVELATIONS SINCE MARCH 6TH in mind, I would look for bigger safety issues with the other carriers outside Southwest. It's the FAA that's drop the ball.

Let's see how those "safe" airlines you all are switching to fair from the announcement today that the FAA will be checking all domestic airlines paperwork. At least SWA came forward and let them know they missed an inspection, albeit not something that was critical to the safety of it's passengers.