Following United’s time spent under a microscope for its recent safety lapses, another airline is ready to take its place as Southwest Airlines faces additional scrutiny due to its recent spat of in-flight scares.
As you may recall, United had some, um, incidents recently. These incidents included a tire falling off a Boeing 777 departing SFO and hitting a car, along with a new Boeing 737 MAX 9 running off a runway in IAH thanks to pilot error. However, they aren’t the only ones having issues. The largest domestic airline in the U.S. has seen its fair share of issues lately, which is why now Southwest Airlines faces additional scrutiny.
Southwest Airlines Faces Additional Scrutiny
The no one was injured in Southwest’s recent spat of incidents, they were concerning. These incidents included:
- In April, a flight arriving in Lihue, Kaua’i, descended too quickly before correcting itself 400 feet above the surface of the ocean.
- Also in April, a flight departing Denver, Colorado, saw its engine cowling tear off and strike its wing flap because maintenance employees didn’t properly secure it the night before. Despite what you may have heard, this wasn’t Boeing’s fault.
- May saw an unusual dutch-roll incident that everyone wanted to blame Boeing for, but in reality was because the aircraft got damaged when stored outside during a thunderstorm and wasn’t inspected before being put back into service.
- In June, a Southwest flight departing Portland, Maine, took off from a temporarily closed runway.
- Also in June, a flight arriving in Oklahoma City descended to 525 AGL when it was still nine miles away from the airport.
- The closest call came this month when a flight arriving in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, came within 150 feet of the ocean while it was still five miles away from the airport.
That’s a lot of incidents in such a short period of time, which is why Southwest Airlines faces additional scrutiny from the FAA now.
We don’t know a whole lot about the situation at hand – just that “the FAA has increased oversight of Southwest Airlines to ensure it is complying with federal safety regulations.” Like United’s review, there is no definitive timeline. Per the FAA, safety will determine how long the process takes.
Keeping Things Grounded
While these incidents are concerning, it’s important to reiterate how safe air travel really is. Southwest Airlines operates thousands of flights per day without issue. No, I’m not saying this to minimize what happen – it’s to exemplify how rare these types of events are, even though it sounds like they’re happening all the time. Moreover, despite what the media seems to want you to believe, none of these are due to Boeing and its issues. These are all due to pilot error and maintenance issues.
Again, I’m not trying to minimize the issues that Boeing is having, either. However, it irritates me how the media just loves to automatically blame everything on Boeing, when most experts, and investigations confirmed, that virtually everything that happened at United and Southwest were due to errors and oversights at the airlines.
Southwest Airlines Faces Additional Scrutiny, Final Thoughts
Again, while these incidents are concerning, air travel and Southwest are still both safe. Yes, that Southwest Airlines faces additional scrutiny from the FAA is not good, on the flip side, it will make the airline safer – same with United. Heck, I flew with Southwest in the middle of this all going on, as I used them to get to Maui and back this past Memorial Day, and I never second-guessed that decision. I was just annoyed that I got stuck on 737-800 instead of a 737 MAX 8.
However, this scrutiny can have implications for Southwest, as they’re seeking certification of their new premium legroom layout, and this extra attention may delay that process.