Southwest To Pay $7.5 Million Civil Penalty

Frances Fiorino fiorino@aviationweek.com

Southwest Airlines has agreed to implement maintenance safety measures and pay $7.5 million in settlement of the FAA's proposed $10.2-million civil penalty for operating aircraft without checks for fatigue cracking.

Following allegations raised by the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, the FAA on March 6, 2008, slapped the proposed penalty on Southwest. The agency charged that Southwest operated 46 aircraft on nearly 50,000 flights without performing inspections for fuselage fatigue cracking mandated in a September 2004 airworthiness directive (AD) - inferring the carrier knowingly placed the more than 200,000 passengers transported in harm's way.

The FAA admitted complicity, in that its inspectors failed to order a grounding of the aircraft before the checks were completed. The event sparked two Congressional hearings on FAA safety oversight, as well as an FAA audit of its AD monitoring system.

Under the terms of the agreement, Southwest will pay the $7.5 million civil penalty in three $2.5 million installments, with final payment due Jan. 15, 2011. The penalty could double if the airline does not implement 13 safety improvements. They include: Increase the number technical representatives for heavy maintenance vendors to 35 from 27 (30 days compliance time); allow FAA inspectors improved access to data used for tracking maintenance and engineering activities (60 days); designate a Quality Assurance manager who does not have air carrier certification responsibilities (90 days); Review Required Inspection item (RII) procedures to ensure compliance with FAA maintenance rules and to identify more clearly all RII items on work instructions, engineering authorizations and task cards (180 days), and rewrite all FAA-approved manuals (365 days).

Photo: Benet Wilson

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