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Southwest Airlines has canceled 40 flights a day since they announced their voluntary inspection program following a deadly accident aboard a plane that made an emergency landing in Philadelphia.
“Since we announced our voluntary, accelerated inspection program on Tuesday night, we have maintained minimal disruption to our operation and only needed to cancel about 40 flights each day — again on a total operating schedule of approximately 4,000 daily flights,” Southwest said in a statement Sunday afternoon.
Southwest implemented its inspection program after the NTSB said one of the engine fan blades on Flight 1380 snapped, hurling debris that broke a window and led to the death of a passenger who was sucked partway out of the plane.
“Since we announced our voluntary, accelerated inspection program on Tuesday night, we have maintained minimal disruption to our operation and only needed to cancel about 40 flights each day — again on a total operating schedule of approximately 4,000 daily flights,” Southwest said in a statement Sunday afternoon.
Southwest implemented its inspection program after the NTSB said one of the engine fan blades on Flight 1380 snapped, hurling debris that broke a window and led to the death of a passenger who was sucked partway out of the plane.
The jet was headed from New York to Dallas.
“The 40 cancellations today are due to aircraft being out of service for our accelerated engine fan blade engine inspection program, which we announced on Tuesday night,” Southwest said in their statement.
Southwest says the cancellation make up about 1 percent of their flying each day and “is similar, or less than, what we would cancel on any given operating day due to things like local weather.”
The airline says they do not have cancellation predictions for the next few days as the fan blade inspections are ongoing.
“Our Technical Operations Team is working safely and diligently to accomplish the inspections as soon as possible, including during the overnight period,” Southwest says.
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered inspections of 352 jet engines in the U.S. and another 681 worldwide on “new generation” Boeing 737 jets. Each aircraft has two engines.
The requirement from the agency comes after the engine maker, CFM International, issued a service bulletin recommending that more engines be inspected.
At issue are the engine fan blades on Boeing 737-600, 700, 800 and 900 jets.
The CFM 56-7B engines are on about 1,800 “new generation” 737s in service in the U.S. and about 6,400 worldwide.
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