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Southwest Grounds 8% of its Fleet
By admin | March 12, 2008
The AP is reporting that Southwest has grounded 44 737-300’s as a result of failed crack testing. One of the 44 has already been retired, and five are currently in maintenance, which leaves 38 aircraft that will have to be taken out of the active fleet. According to Southwest, the grounding of these aircraft is causing flight cancellations, although they are not saying to what extent the cancellations are being made.
For those of you new to this story, Southwest disclosed an error in their maintenance that allowed a total of 46 aircraft to exceed the required deadline for fuselage crack testing. The FAA dropped a staggering $10 million fine as a result of the lapse, which has sent the Southwest PR department into a frenzy.
Here’s my problem: As far as we know, the FAA did not catch Southwest doing anything illegal. In fact, Southwest caught their own mistake and disclosed it to the FAA. This is highly encouraged in the aviation industry to identify areas where current policies may be lacking, and to share information with other airlines in a collaborative attempt at improving safety. It seems someone at the FAA got a little bit media hungry on this one as they stepped outside protocol to bring the hammer down on Southwest. $10 million is a drop in the bucket compared to the damage they’ve done to the FAA. Even worse, the FAA has damaged it’s own self-disclosure program by making such a public spectacle of something Southwest originally brought to the FAA’s attention. I’m not saying the errors should have been hidden. Quite the contrary, its the sharing and collaboration of this information that makes our aviation system one of the safest in the world. But the FAA should not have publicly embarrassed Southwest for the error, rather they should have approached it as an opportunity to close a gap in airline safety.
The unfortunate side-effect of this could very easily be a hesitation for airlines to self-disclose errors to the FAA in fear of being made a public spectacle. This isn’t to say Southwest would have gotten off scott-free, but it does still provide incentive for airlines to publicly disclose their errors without being publicly ridiculed by the agency from who they’re asking help to fix the problem.
Pilots also have a self-disclosure type of system called the ASRS (Aviation Safety Reporting System) funded by NASA with the true intent on gathering information on possibly unsafe situations with the intent of keeping them from happening again. This system has been considered a success by all standards, and proves the safety benefits of a self-disclosure system. If safety really is the FAA’s first priority, they need to be more proactive in pursuing that rather than punishment.
But then again, the FAA did just get $10 million and a lot of TV-time.
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