Southwest responds to Flight 2294 NTSB findings, a Nashville to Baltimore Washington-bound Southwest Airlines flight that diverted and landed safely in Charleston, West Va., with 126 passengers onboard in July 2009.
We are in full compliance with all new Safety regulations developed by Boeing and the FAA and we thank the NTSB for its thorough investigation. We worked closely with investigators throughout this process and we concur with their conclusions. We've taken aggressive measures to incorporate additional maintenance inspections, additive to existing programs, in response to what was learned from flight 2294. Immediately after the accident, we increased our ongoing maintenance inspections in the impacted area to include recurring detailed visual inspections and non-destructive tests (NDT) – with a goal to not only meet but exceed known Safety standards. At Southwest Airlines, everything is secondary to Safety, which is the core of our operation. Southwest continues to improve its maintenance program for the continued Safety of U.S. air travel and our own excellent Safety record.
Comments
For the past twenty-five years, Southwest has had zero accidents resulting in a passenger fatality. This compares to the other majors:
AA 6
AE 4
CO 4
DL 3
UA 6
UE 3
US 5
Accidents last year per 1 million takeoffs, Southwest=0:
AA 3.4
AE 2.1
CO 3.4
DL 2.2
NW 8.6
UA 4.5
No passenger fatalities and none on an airport, but perhaps the parents of a certain California child on a roadway adjacent to an airport in a rainstorm might question the Southwest Airlines safety record.
Airline code AE; Is that American Eagle Airlines Inc.? American Eagle's code is MQ. Is that not common knowledge? AE is Mandarin Airlines.
There is an unwritten law in aviation not to point fingers on accident rates of other airlines. Fortunately, airline accidents are so extremely rare that statistics frequently do not express long term reality. Suggesting that Southwest is safer than other American carriers just shows lack of understanding. Aviation in the US, Europe, Japan, Australia is really, really safe. Please do not use "statistical noise" to suggest that Southwest is the "safest" as this can change any second - and Southwest also has had its problems!
December 8, 2005, Southwest Airlines Flight 1248
I think Southwest is exceptionally lucky and when the day comes that they are involved in a real incident, if the crews act like they do during the demo's (which are often carried out well after the doors are armed and the aircraft is halfway to the runway) it will be the passengers needing the luck to evacuate safely. Jokes and trite remarks are no help during those occasions.
Post new comment