Southwest Airlines canceled dozens more flights Monday as the carrier’s fleet continues to feel some impact from an accelerated inspection program of engine fan blades put in place after last week’s fatal accident.
Southwest canceled 129 flights as of Monday afternoon, about 3 percent of the roughly 4,000 daily flights the Dallas-based carrier operates. Another 620 flights were reported delayed, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware, representing about 15 percent of Southwest's flights for the day.
The carrier sped up its inspections last week after an engine failed on a Tuesday flight from New York to Dallas. The failure, in which one of 24 fan blades on the CFM56-7B engine broke off, led to the death of a passenger onboard the flight as debris hit the wing and fuselage, causing a window to blow out.
It was the first onboard fatality from an accident in Southwest’s 47-year history, and the first in the U.S. commercial aviation since 2009.
Southwest had a similar incident play out in August 2016, when a fan blade broke off from another engine, of the same type, and forced an emergency landing, although no passengers were injured in that case. The National Transportation Safety Board has not issued a final report on its investigation into that accident.
The carrier couldn’t put a specific number on how many of Monday’s cancellations were due to aircraft being temporarily taken out of service for the fan blade inspections. On Sunday, the carrier canceled 49 flights, with at least 40 attributed to the accelerated maintenance program.
“We will continue our work to minimize flight disruptions by performing inspections overnight while aircraft are not flying and utilizing spare aircraft, when available,” Southwest said in a statement. “We anticipate minimal delays or cancellations each day this week due to the inspections.”
The carrier said it could not provide real-time updates on how flight operations were being impacted because aircraft were regularly entering and exiting service for the inspections.
Southwest said last Tuesday that it will speed up an already underway process to use ultrasonic scans to inspect the fan blades. The company said it expects to finish the inspections within 30 days.
The inspections take about four hours per engine, according to manufacturer CFM International, a joint company between General Electric and France’s Safran Aircraft Engines.
The manufacturer first recommended enhanced ultrasonic inspections of the blades on older engines last year in a notice to carriers. The Federal Aviation Administration started a process in August 2017 to make such inspections mandatory -- a process that has yet to conclude.
Separately, on Friday, the FAA issued an emergency directive requiring inspection within 20 days of about 680 engines that had more than 30,000 takeoffs and landings in their lifetime. Another 2,500 engines worldwide will require inspection by the end of August.
