The following statement was just issued regarding Southwest Airline's continued internal maintenance audit.
SOUTHWEST AIRLINES CONTINUES INTERNAL INVESTIGATION AND AUDIT
Airline Makes the Decision to Temporarily Remove 38 Aircraft
from Scheduled Service
DALLAS - March 12, 2008 - Yesterday, Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly said the airline is taking action on preliminary findings of its own internal investigation into allegations that it violated FAA regulations in March 2007. Kelly vowed to make any changes necessary to ensure that the airline is in full compliance with FAA Airworthiness Directives and all of its own maintenance programs, policies, and procedures.
During last night's review by Southwest of its maintenance records, the airline discovered an ambiguity related to required testing. Southwest made the decision to take a conservative approach and remove aircraft out of scheduled service. Southwest immediately began reinspecting those aircraft. A total of 44 aircraft were affected-one was already retired, five were in maintenance for scheduled checks, and the remaining 38 were removed from scheduled service.
Southwest's decision to remove aircraft from service resulted in approximately four percent of today's Southwest flights being canceled. Due to good weather conditions, the decision caused minimal schedule disruptions and the airline is running more than 90 percent ontime.
A portion of the aircraft have been inspected, cleared, and returned to service. The airline expects to have all of these aircraft inspected by early this evening. The ongoing internal review of Southwest's maintenance programs, policies, and procedures could potentially create other operational changes if the airline needs to swap or reroute aircraft as the internal investigation and audit unfolds.
"Again, we are mindful that during Southwest's 37-year proud history, we have safely transported the population of the United States-every man, woman, and child-four and a half times over. This is a fact. We have been a safe Company. I believe we are a safe Company. I am committed to making sure we become safer still," said Southwest CEO Gary Kelly.
Comments
Mr. Martin, I hope that time, distance and more information becoming available to the public in the coming weeks will give you more perspective about what happened with this incident. Southwest does not "disregard passenger safety", ever. I wish you the best of luck flying on other airlines, but I can assure you that similar and perhaps even more serious problems exist at other airlines. I wonder if the FAA intends to give all the airlines' maintenance records the "Southwest treatment"? Seems unfair that only one airline is being given this sort of unprecedented scrutiny...
Southwest Airline's continued disregard for passenger safety should have resulted in the maximum allowable penalty of $36M.
We no longer trust SWA and will not permit any of our employees to book company travel on SWA.
Sorry SWA, We LUV life more!
>>>What a pity you need to criticize the person and not stick to the interesting points in the discussion.
Just like you did. I see it got your attention.
I think we're just have to going to agree to disagree here. As I said before, I'll wait until FAA's and Southwest's respective investigations have concluded before I can assess whether the missed inspections were intentional and profit-motivated, which I doubt. As a human factors specialist, I'm sure the old addage "Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity" rings a bell with you, and "stupidity" can be easily replaced by other terms while still keping the overall statement accurate. Like everyone, we'll all just to wait and see.
Sorry about your lost training gig--best of luck in your future endeavors.
LltoFL, I don't think you know much about airplanes. Planes are over-engineered so that a single minor human error doesn't bring down a flight. If you look at many of the major crashes of recent history, the crash wasn't usually due to a single mistake. There was usually a cascade of mistakes that culminated in the plane going down. If planes weren't built this way you'd have planes falling out of the sky on a weekly or even daily basis.
In addition, airlines have overlapping inspection programs so that, in SW's case, the "missed" FAA mandated inspection wasn't really "missed" at all. It was "missed" in terms of the paperwork, but other, overlapping Southwest maintenance programs ensured that this area of the plane had eyes, ears and tools all over it. The way it is reported makes it sound like these planes were just flyin' around all over the place with no one checking them out - totally not true. And sorry, planes have cracks in them all the time, it is routine, that's why they have programs in place to deal with the problem. It's simply routine wear and tear on the airplane like wear on your auto brakes and tires.
One question to all of you here...you put all of your own lives in your hands every day behind the wheel if you own a car. Now tell me one thing: Do each and every one of you make sure your vehicle is 100% perfectly maintained at every manufacturer-specified maintenance interval? I'm sure you're on the phone to your dealership just before you cross that mileage point! Do you fill your tires with air at every gas station fill-up, and make sure the oil is completely topped off? Do you get the windshield replaced when there is a any tiny crack in it on the driver's side? Do you vaccuum your car every day after you track mud and debris into it?
Yeah...didn't think so. Southwest Airlines has over 500 planes and yeah they are carrying people and they are a business. They have a responsibility to make sure they do all those things on time. But look at their history...NO fatal accidents involving passengers. They are a SAFE airline. Somebody screwed up royally, and SWA will fix it. When you step on SWA you step onto the safest airline in America. NO other carrier has SWA's safety record. Think about that the next time you book on AA or DL or UA or NW or AK or FL or any other airline...most if not ALL have had a fatal accident in their history. And I am sure that NONE of them made it 37+ years without having one. So chew on that while you forget to check your oil at your next fill-up at the gas station.
And I was crushed when I couldn't get an interview for the Inernal Audit department.....shoulda hired me, SWA!
Unfortunately there is little room for error with airplanes....just like space shuttles. One "little human error" can be disastrous! We put our lives in the hands of the airlines and their pilots every day and expect no less than 100% compliance with the safety regulations. There is no excuse for oversight, and there is no excuse for the spin the airline puts on their explanation of the oversights. Who can we believe?
Dear CharlieWest219,
What a pity you need to criticize the person and not stick to the interesting points in the discussion. Great, mentality - perhaps you even work for Southwest!!!!!
An excellent article:
http://www.star-telegram.com/226/story/530246.html
>>>Maybe if the poor child who was killed in the accident had been your own, what would your feelings have been then?
What a cheap emotional shot, and how incredibly insenstive of a human factors specialist to even ask. I'd never even think about asking about 111, or any other crash in the last 50 years.
The fact that you continue to reject the other poster's common sense use of the word "catastrophic" suggests that maybe you have another agenda to advance, or axe to grind. I don't know what, if anything, it is, nor do I care, but there does seem to be a certain lack of objectivity on your part. All airlines are run by humans, and humans sometimes make mistakes, so does that mean all airlines are "unsafe"?
I'm unable to debate the semantics of "catastrophic" further, since my son has just advised me that the oven timer just went off and dinner is about to be catastrophically unedible if I don't intercede.