The Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday proposed a record $10.2 million penalty against Southwest Airlines, accusing the country’s largest low cost carrier of serious and deliberate safety violations.
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The US aviation regulators said the largest fine ever against an airline has been levied against Southwest airlines because it failed to perform mandatory inspections for potentially hazardous structural problems. The proposed penalty covers nearly four dozen aircraft and more than 61.000 flights.
The low-cost airline has been blamed by FAA for misleading its officials about whether it continued to fly older Boeing 737 planes for several days last year after failing to inspect them for cracks in the fuselage.
The agency said that even after Southwest realized 46 of its planes had not been checked for fuselage cracks, still the airline continued to fly them, violating safety inspections and putting the lives of passengers in danger.
In response, Southwest Airlines said it has never put passengers in danger, however, it admitted that it kept flying several planes with cracks in their fuselages.
Last year in March, the Dallas, Texas- based low-fare airline Southwest notified the FAA it had mistakenly failed to conduct the inspections. Some planes’ inspections were nine months overdue.
According to FAA, Southwest failed to inspect nearly four dozen older Boeing 737 planes.
The mandatory inspections are designed to detect any cracks in the body of a plane. Inspection for fuselage cracks became mandatory in 1988 after an Aloha Airlines 737 peeled apart at 24,000 feet in the air. A flight attendant was killed.
"[The inspections are critical] to make sure that the health of the airplane structurally is maintained throughout the life of the airplane," former NTSB board member John Golgia said. "What you want to do is find these cracks when they're very, very small, so they can be repaired. When the cracks get to be large, it indicates, it could mean in impending failure."
Although, Southwest is facing a record breaking fine from the FAA for flying planes that were unsafe, but it still is considered to be one of the Safest Airlines in the United States. In its history the low-cost airline has never had a fatal crash involving any of the passengers or crew.