Southwest May Bear Biggest Brunt After FAA Grounding of Boeing Max Jets
Photo Credit: Southwest is grounding its Boeing 737 Max fleet under orders from the FAA. The airline will try to pick up the slack with other aircraft, like this Boeing 737-700 seen in Salt Lake City. Southwest Airlines / Stephen M. Keller
Skift Take
U.S. airlines downplayed the significance of the FAA's decision to ground the Boeing 737 Max, mostly saying they have enough slack in their fleets to take care of most customers. American and United probably will be OK, but it's hard to believe this will be business as usual for Southwest. It has more Max aircraft than the others.
With the Federal Aviation Administration grounding all Boeing 737 Max jets on Wednesday, American Airlines, United Airlines, and Southwest Airlines now must rejigger schedules to ensure they inconvenience as few passengers as possible.
All three will need to cancel or delay flights, especially short term, before they're able to make changes to which aircraft they fly on what routes. United, with 14 Max jets, and American, with 24, should be OK, because the Max accounts for a relatively smaller percentage of their enormous fleets.
What about Southwest?
The nation's biggest domestic carrier may have more trouble than its peers maintaining a quasi-normal schedule. Southwest already has had trouble with on-time performance this year as it fights an increasingly public battle with its mechanics, who have been pulling more aircraft from service due to what the airline calls minor issues.
Southwest, which filed suit against its mechanics union earlier this month in federal court,
