Southwest Flights Canceled: Thousands Inconvenienced, Airline Stands To Lose Millions

UPDATE, 4/4 10:52 AM

DALLAS — Southwest Airlines expects to cancel 70 more flights on Monday as it inspects older planes for cracks in the fuselage.

The airline canceled about 600 flights over the weekend after a Boeing 737-300 jet sprung a 5-foot hole in the roof shortly after takeoff from Phoenix on Friday. The plane made an emergency landing. Southwest said no one was seriously injured.

Spokeswoman Brandy King says Southwest has inspected 33 similar planes and returned them to service and expects to complete checks on remaining grounded planes by late Tuesday.

King says two planes had cracks similar to those in the Phoenix jet and will be repaired before they fly again. A National Transportation Safety Board member tells The Associated Press a third plane was also found to have cracks developing.

PREVIOUSLY:
David Koenig, Associated Press

DALLAS -- Southwest Airlines Co.'s decision to cancel about 300 flights Saturday inconvenienced thousands of passengers and may have cost the airline several million dollars in lost revenue.

The damage to Southwest's earnings would be reduced, however, if stranded passengers rebook on other Southwest flights rather than canceling their planned trip.

The airline canceled the flights – more than 10 percent of its Saturday schedule – when it grounded nearly 80 planes of the same type that had a rupture in its fuselage after takeoff from Phoenix on Friday. The planes will undergo inspections of their aluminum skin.

Southwest spokeswoman Linda Rutherford said it was too soon for the company to estimate the cost of grounding one-seventh of its fleet. She said Southwest might provide numbers later this month, when it releases its first-quarter earnings report.

The grounded planes are 137-seat Boeing 737-300s. Using the airline's most recent available figures for average occupancy, it's possible to estimate that more than 31,000 paying passengers were stranded Saturday. Southwest says on its website, updated this week, that its average one-way fare is $130.27, which would produce a $4.1 million loss in revenue.

However, such an estimate could be conservative because planes are more full in April than February, the last month for which Southwest occupancy numbers are available. Also, some of the canceled flights were to use slightly bigger versions of the 737.

The estimate could also be too high for several reasons. Rutherford said Southwest tried to cancel flights with the fewest passengers – a standard practice when airlines must scrub flights. Also, Saturday flights may have fewer high-fare business travelers.

Southwest had 2010 revenue of $12.1 billion.

Whatever the cost of Saturday's cancelations, Southwest faces a bigger problem if a large number of those grounded planes remain out of service into the work week.

Recently, JetBlue Airways said it lost $30 million in revenue due to late-December storms that caused it to cancel 1,400 flights.

Comments

[CBPatriot]

01:19 PM on 04/05/2011

I am in 'Vegas with a high school FIRST Robotics Team from Merrimack NH. Yes, we've been inconvenienced, but Southwest has been phenomenal in getting our flights rescheduled. The biggest concern was the lodging, which S/W has picked up. As far as I'm concerned, these people have done the best they could in a bad situation.

[Figerre]

12:42 PM on 04/05/2011

Regardless, this is the 3rd accident in 17 years, two of which involved winter weather. I would still stake my life on SW because I know, even tho they keep their planes flying, they also have more frequent maintenance check ups and they are done in the US...not the philipeans or bangladesh or wherever else the airline industry can get the cheapest deal. I only wish they flew into Iowa.

BTW, how is this going to work when the GOP cuts FAA funding and there are FEWER inspectors? Course the Republicans are blind and single minded in that they want to destroy Obama, and willing to take the country down with him.

[Peter007]

09:24 AM on 04/05/2011

Nothing in the world is 100% Risk free.
Airlines are much , much safer than auto or train travel.

[jazzman]

09:04 AM on 04/05/2011

Southwest issued a press release stating that it had done all of the inspections required by the FAA. The problem is that the FAA, in the spirit of deregulations, only requires an airline to inspect the parts of their plane that have historically given them a problem. That's like never screening a patient for cancer because the only thing every detected on them in the past was skin cancer.

Here's our present regulatory picture in today's world of regulatory capture by the various industries:

The airlines lobbies (bribes) Congress to deregulate their industry
Congress passes laws restricting regulation and regulatory agencies from doing anything
Uninspected cracks blow a hole in a fuselage of an airline.
The industry spokesman says that the airlines complied with the required safety regulations

You can substitute BP, Mining Industry, Nuclear Industry, Building Codes, for the word 'airline' up above because its the same story for all of them. It's the Republican way.

[Peter007]

09:18 AM on 04/05/2011

The deregulation of the airlines had to do only with routes and fares. It had nothing to do with maintenance of the planes.
Engineers determined that the outer skin of these planes would last for 60,000 cycles. ( Takeoffs and landings ). Airlines have no say in safety rules. The manufacturer of the airplane is more responsible for its safety than the airlines.

[jazzman]

10:19 AM on 04/05/2011

You don't think the FAA was underfunded and had too few regulators and that the industry has been left to police itself? I guess you haven't kept up with the Bush years.

[tholin]

11:48 PM on 04/05/2011

"Airlines have no say in safety rules. The manufactur­er of the airplane is more responsibl­e for its safety than the airlines."

Not really. Prior to enacting any regulatory change, the FAA is required by statute (and Executive Order) to solicit public comment from airlines, industry groups and manufacturers before endowing an act with mandatory compliance. For their part, airlines vigorously protect their financial interests by arguing for extended compliance times, limitations on scope and inspection requirements, and exaggerating the financial burden of new regulatory requirements.

During the drafting of one particular Airworthiness Directive in 2008 for fatigue cracking of fuselage frames, Southwest argued for pushing the compliance time from 6,000 cycles to 9,000; by their cycle utilization, they effectively were looking for two more years to address the requirement. Additionally, while the FAA and Boeing estimated the work on each aircraft to cost between $1,500 and $3,000, Southwest claimed a burden of $96,000 per plane.

As for responsibilty of the aircraft, do realize that when a carrier fails to perform required maintenance, specified by the manufacturer and given the force of law by the FAA, then that carrier is indeed responsible - and liable - for said inaction, and is precisely why Southwest was fined $7.5 million in 2009.

[robert horwitz]

06:02 AM on 04/05/2011

This is why a business needs a good public relations firm and advertising agency. How to put a happy face on a disaster. "Opening Shot" in Southwest's newest commercial. Happy travelers all flying at thirty six thousand feet. Pan to voice over and readable copy. Say folks tired of flying in stuffy unventilated cabins? Well then fly Southwest's newest plane with a sun roof. "Cut Away Shot" to top of plane being ripped off as all the happy and smiling travelers are inundated in clean fresh air. Makes we want to buy a ticket. How about you?

[liberalbug]

09:40 PM on 04/04/2011

It amazes me that we have come from the garden to flight in a mere 6000 years. Humanity is AWESOME!

[HarpoSnarx]

02:55 PM on 04/04/2011

Let the CongressWhores travel in the same aircraft they want us to travel in.

No more corporate or military jets. LET THEM face the perils they're voting to place us in to please their corporate masters.

[FreedToChoose]

01:49 PM on 04/04/2011

A cancelled flight is less convenient than an abrupt landing.

[ruburnt]

01:32 PM on 04/04/2011

We fly Southwest all of the time. Never had a problem, better safe than sorry......

[Thinklongterm]

01:17 PM on 04/04/2011

Read Unfriendly Skies and you'll learn about those so-called FAA regulations.

[Monique Kelly Vallance]

12:53 PM on 04/04/2011

This is why I don't fly Southwest. Not too long ago they were caught trying to bribe FAA officials to overlook problems with their aircraft that they didn't want to fix. I could have predicted that this would happen because for them, money is worth more than customer safety. Sorry, but my life isn't worth saving a few extra dollars...

[xmaskarol]

02:48 PM on 04/04/2011

please dont fly swa, monique, your negativity brings me down!!!

[orbo]

10:19 AM on 04/04/2011

Maybe this is karma coming at Southwest airlines for making over-weight passengers by 2 seats!

[KIVPossum]

10:41 AM on 04/04/2011

Or the stress on the aircraft from carrying you

[Phoebe917]

12:50 PM on 04/04/2011

lol.

[Thinklongterm]

01:15 PM on 04/04/2011

lol

[xmaskarol]

02:50 PM on 04/04/2011

if you are as big as two people , then buy two seats...I've sat next to over-weight people and it wasnt plesant, they are taking up more space...someone must pay the overage...

[espressobeans]

10:12 AM on 04/04/2011

It seems they were being responsible. Delta recently cancelled my nice direct flight 24 hours ahead of time with the claimed excuse being predicted bad weather and then rebooked me on flight hop hell.

[sleepytoad]

12:14 PM on 04/04/2011

It sort of sounds like Delta was being was being responsible. I would much rather my airline took extra precautions than not. But that's me.

[espressobeans]

01:06 PM on 04/04/2011

I don't think so. I'd rather wait for actual weather. All it did was rain. Plippity, plop rain. And for all the havoc they wreaked into my schedule, the bump jump connector flight they put me on was delayed and actually took off at the exact same time as my originally scheduled flight. Except I wasn't going to my original destination. And I had already missed my connection.

[espressobeans]

01:46 PM on 04/04/2011

Interestingly, an article on complaints: "Southwest Airlines maintained its ranking as the airline with the lowest consumer complaint rate, 0.27 per 100,000 passengers in 2010. Delta had the worst rate again, two per 100,000 passengers. from the Associated Press, "

[jimmygeewhiz]

09:58 AM on 04/04/2011

See what happens when big government gets involved? The airlines lose millions and passengers are inconvenience. Do away with all the programs that regulate. Right Republicans?

[zogimperator]

10:34 AM on 04/04/2011

The rank-and-file don't fly. They're too frightened to go anywhere.

[Peter007]

09:22 AM on 04/05/2011

The government was in charge of regulating Southwest and the deep water rig in the Gulf.
So the only evidence you are presenting is that government regulations have failed.
If airline safety was not government controlled , you might have a case.

[Marlo Stanfield]

09:55 AM on 04/04/2011

Well I do feel sorry for those that missed their flights, but isn't this preferable to having a plane actually crash? It seems to me that SW is putting people above profits here, which is something that too many companies these days (I'm looking in your direction BP and Goldman Sachs) don't do....