Southwest faces fine over safety

DALLAS — Federal regulators said Thursday that they will seek a civil penalty of $10.2 million — the largest ever — against Southwest Airlines Co. for failing to inspect older planes for cracks and then flying them before inspections were done.

The FAA said Southwest operated nearly 60,000 flights in 2006 and 2007 using 46 planes that had not been inspected for possible fatigue-related cracking on the fuselage areas.

The airline flew another 1,451 flights with the same planes in March 2007, even after discovering that it had failed to conduct the required inspections, the FAA charged.

The agency had ordered airlines in September 2004 to conduct repeat inspections of some areas of the fuselage on some older models of Boeing 737 aircraft.

"The FAA is taking action against Southwest Airlines for a failing to follow rules that are designed to protect passengers and crew," said Nicholas A. Sabatini, the agency's associate administrator for safety. "We expect the airline industry to fully comply with all FAA directives and take corrective action."

The airline said Thursday it had complied with regulators' requests and would contest any fine. The airline has 30 days to respond to the FAA.

The aim of the FAA's 2004 directive was to make sure airline crews found and repaired small cracks before they became large enough to pose a safety hazard.

A spokeswoman for Southwest, Beth Harbin, said the airline brought the issue to the FAA's attention and believed it had handled the matter to the agency's satisfaction. Harbin said the airline believed the case was closed last year.

"We brought in 46 airplanes to take another look at them," Harbin said. "These are preventive inspections. On six of the 46, we found the start of some very small cracking. That's the intent of the inspection schedule — to find something before it becomes a problem. These are safe planes."

The FAA itself has come under fire for the Southwest case. A congressional committee and the Transportation Department's inspector general are looking into why the FAA didn't ground the planes when it learned of the missed inspections a year ago.

Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said he got information from whistle-blowers indicating that an FAA inspector let Southwest operate flights before properly inspecting the planes.