Southwest Airlines on Tuesday voluntarily grounded 128 planes - almost 20 percent of its fleet - after discovering it failed to perform mandatory inspections of the backup rudder systems on the aircrafts.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the news about the missing inspections on the airline's Boeing 737-700s, and Dallas-based Southwest spent the better part of Tuesday afternoon and evening working with the Federal Aviation Administration to allow the carrier to continue to use the planes. The FAA agreed to give Southwest five days to make the inspections.
A Southwest spokeswoman issued a statement saying that the airline had informed the FAA of the issue at 5 p.m. on Tuesday.
"Southwest Airlines discovered an overdue maintenance check required to be performed on the standby hydraulic system, which serves as a back-up to the primary hydraulic systems. As a result of this discovery, 128 -700 aircraft were identified as having overflown a required check," she said. "Once identified, Southwest immediately and voluntarily removed the affected aircraft from service, initiated maintenance checks, disclosed the matter to the FAA, and developed an action plan to complete all overdue checks. The FAA approved a proposal that would allow Southwest to continue operating the aircraft for a maximum of five days as the checks are completed. Approximately 80 cancellations occurred (Tuesday) as a result of the events and the airline is anticipating a very minimal impact to their operations (today). The safety of our customers and employees remains our highest priority, and we are working quickly to resolve the situation."
Southwest is the country's fourth-largest airline.
The FAA also issued a statement late Tuesday night.
"Late Tuesday afternoon, Southwest Airlines notified the Federal Aviation Administration that it had missed some required inspections on the standby rudder system for 128 of its Boeing 737 aircraft," the agency said. "The airline voluntarily removed these aircraft from service while the FAA works with Boeing and Southwest to evaluate a proposal that would allow the airline to continue flying the planes until the inspections are completed over the next few days."
This is not the first time Southwest has had maintenance issues and knocked heads with the FAA The airline was fined $12 million last summer, a record penalty that it is fighting in court, and, in 2008, paid a $7.2 million fine for maintenance problems.
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