The FAA has launched a safety audit of Southwest Airlines. This comes after the airline came within feet of the water while still miles from Tampa less than a month after another of the airline’s 737s descended to just over 500 feet while still 9 miles out from the Oklahoma City airport.
The airline said it had already formed a team of experts and leaders from the airline, its unions and the FAA to take a close look at its safety system.
“This group is tasked with performing an in-depth, data-driven analysis to identify any opportunities for improvement. Nothing is more important to Southwest than the safety of our customers and employees,” the airline said.
In April, a Southwest Airlines flight in Hawaii came within 400 feet of the Pacific Ocean. Last month a Southwest Airlines flight took off from a closed runway
United has just come out from under a safety audit that prevented it from putting any new planes into commercial service or inaugurating flights to new cities.
The FAA’s Office of Inspector General has previously found that the agency “has not effectively overseen Southwest Airlines’ systems for managing safety risks.”
FAA learned in 2018 that the carrier regularly and frequently communicated incorrect aircraft weight and balance data to its pilots—a violation of FAA regulations and an important safety issue. Southwest Airlines also operates aircraft in an unknown airworthiness state, including more than 150,000 flights on previously owned aircraft that did not meet U.S. aviation standards—putting 17.2 million passengers at risk.
In both cases, the carrier continues operating aircraft without ensuring compliance with regulations because FAA accepted the air carrier’s justification that the issues identified were low safety risks.
Second, FAA inspectors do not evaluate air carrier risk assessments or safety culture as part of their oversight of Southwest Airlines’ SMS. This is because FAA has not provided inspectors with guidance on how to review risk assessments or how to evaluate and oversee a carrier’s safety culture. As a result, FAA cannot provide assurance that the carrier operates at the highest degree of safety in the public’s interest, as required by law.
Since the start of the pandemic, the FAA ‘closed’ 9 of 11 recommendations to address deficiencies in monitoring Southwest Airlines safety.. Four and a half years later there are still outstanding items that the FAA has agreed are problems but have not been fixed.
I’m not surprised. But the safety review needs to be more than SWA, the number of near misses has been exceptional in the past year. Presently the question isn’t if there will be an accident but when.
What is a safety audit going to do with pilot error and that massive failure of an aircraft
The Garbage Boing 737 Max
Did I say Boing!?Even Boeing execs won’t fly it
But airlines love it because they bought it cheap after putting in cheap seats microscopic lavatories and a lack of safety controls in the.Cockpit
Sorry, but I had to think of the late, great George Carlin, who said: “[h]ere’s a phrase that apparently the airlines simply made up: near miss. They say that if 2 planes almost collide, it’s a near miss… [BS], my friend. It’s a near hit! A collision is a near miss.”
So the DOT is investigating DL, the DOL is investigating UA, and the FAA is investigating WN.
It is clear that Washington has decided the high profile airlines are their whipping boys while all kinds of other industries get a pass.
Airline employees do vote
Clearly audits need to be performed with every airliner out there,that way things are on the Up & Up, which means No Un-Necessary mistakes are made because safety is very important
Where is Pete B to fine the FAA for not overseeing SWA sufficiently?
The system is just getting overwhelmed.