From the AP
Southwest Airlines grounded 41 planes overnight in the wake of its recent admission that it had missed required inspections of some planes for structural cracks.
The move announced Wednesday comes as Southwest faces a $10.2 million civil penalty for continuing to fly nearly 50 planes after the airline told regulators that it had missed required inspections of the planes.
The Federal Aviation Administration, which announced the penalty last week, has also come under fire for failing to immediately ground the Southwest jets when it learned they had not been inspected for cracks in the fuselage.
Southwest spokeswoman Christi Day said Wednesday that the move to ground 41 planes resulted in some flights being canceled, although she didn’t have a precise figure.
The grounded planes represent about 8 percent of Southwest’s fleet. The company said at the end of last year it had 520 Boeing 737 jets. Nearly 200 of them are older models, the Boeing 737-300, that were supposed to undergo extra inspections for cracks in the fuselage.
Southwest Chief Executive Gary Kelly had said Tuesday he was concerned by findings from an internal investigation into the missed inspections. He announced that the Dallas-based company had placed three employees on paid leave while it investigated the situation.
