Southwest Airlines cancelled 70 flights on Monday as it continued to inspect Boeing 737 planes following the emergency landing on Friday of a jet with a hole in its fuselage.
A Southwest spokeswoman said 70 flights systemwide were cancelled for Monday out of about 3,400 daily flights. Of 79 older Boeing 737-300s that were designated for additional inspections after the April 1 incident, 33 had been returned to service, she said.
The discount airline cancelled 600 flights over the weekend as it checked 737-300s for fuselage cracks and fatigue after one of its planes made an emergency landing in Arizona. Flight 812 was heading from Phoenix to Sacramento when a 5-foot tear opened in the fuselage 20 minutes after takeoff.
So far, inspections have found cracks in two other planes, Southwest said.
Boeing was expected to issue a service bulletin to operators of 737-300s worldwide on inspection procedures for the subset of planes affected, especially those with particularly heavy use, aviation officials said. Boeing did not have an immediate comment on Monday.
The narrow body 737 is Boeing's best selling model. There are about 280 737-300s currently in the US airline fleet, and 900 globally.
James Higgins, an analyst with Soleil Securities, said the flight cancellations will cause some revenue loss for Southwest but he doesn't expect lasting fallout from this incident.
"I don't think there is anything systematic or persistent here," Higgins said. "This is more noteworthy for its headline generation than for its likely damage to the company."
Source: Reuters
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