Southwest Airlines is a savvy, smart carrier. Passengers love it. The airline has built its considerable reputation on an efficient marriage of low cost and great customer service. Safety? Safety was a given. So the news that the government has fined Southwest $10.2 million for maintenance violations on some older Boeing 737s sent a shudder through the flying public.
If Southwest has maintenance inspection problems, what about all the other airlines? How good are the inspection records at the ones with the abysmal on-time records, where repeated cutbacks and cancellations have left workers and customers alike frustrated and fuming? How safe are all those airplanes?
Belatedly, the Federal Aviation Administration has now asked those same questions. On Tuesday, the FAA ordered a check of maintenance records at all airlines. Specifically, this means the FAA will check compliance with at least 10 safety orders — technically called airworthiness directives — at 118 large and small airlines operating in the U.S. This is to be completed by next Friday. It plans to follow up with a full audit of at least 10 percent of all safety orders by the end of June.
Southwest got into trouble with the FAA for missing inspections on 46 of its more than 500 airplanes and flying those planes even after it detected the maintenance gap. The maintenance checks are to detect hairline cracks in the aluminum skin around plane windows. Southwest grounded 38 planes last week and rechecked them all. It found and repaired cracks in six of them.
Southwest stresses its safety record. It has one of the youngest fleets among major airlines and has never suffered a fatal crash in its 37-year history. Airline executives insist that none of the planes was ever flown in unsafe condition. They initially called the missed inspections “routine and redundant.” But apparently they weren’t. “Routine and redundant” checks, it turned out, were necessary to detect the cracks on those six airplanes.
The best-case scenario is that this turns out to be an isolated problem that cost Southwest $10 million and untold negative publicity. The more unsettling outcome is that the FAA industrywide audit reveals that Southwest wasn’t the only airline that got lax with inspections and the required paperwork that documents them.
All airlines stress their safety records. After all, they couldn’t stay in business if we didn’t trust they could not only leave Chicago, but arrive in Orlando. That trust has been damaged. Passengers are willing to give up some leg room, but they don’t like to hear about cracks in the fuselage.
