Southwest Grounds 115 Planes For Inaccurate Weight Data
September 17 2020 - 10:47AM
Dow Jones News
By Alison Sider
Southwest Airlines. Co. has temporarily grounded 115 planes,
citing discrepancies in data on the jets' weights.
The airline said late Wednesday that it had found a 75-pound
discrepancy between the weight data sent to its dispatch team and
other weight records for the Boeing 737-800 jets. Southwest said it
had stopped flying the planes out of an abundance of caution to
enter correct data into its system and reset the program.
Those weight-related metrics are among the data used to
determine how many passengers and how much fuel can be carried, and
how to distribute cargo. The airline originally believed the issue
affected 130 planes, but revised that overnight.
Southwest said the grounding will cause some delays and
cancellations, but said it expects the impact to its operation to
be minimal. An airline spokesman said Southwest is making steady
progress resolving the issue and has returned a couple dozen of the
planes back to service.
The Federal Aviation Administration earlier this year proposed a
$3.92 million penalty against Southwest, alleging that it had
operated dozens of planes with incorrect data on their operational
empty weights and related measures in 2018.
Southwest has nearly 750 planes in its fleet, including 34
Boeing 737 MAX jets that have been grounded since last year
following two fatal crashes.
Write to Alison Sider at alison.sider@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 17, 2020 10:32 ET (14:32 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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