Posted 3/12/2008 05:52:00 PM by Douglas

Turns out there was more to that broken plane story than Southwest admitted, initially:

Southwest Airlines said Wednesday that it had grounded 38 of its Boeing 737s after a review of maintenance records Tuesday night led it to question whether required testing had been done. The airline said the groundings forced it to cancel 4 percent of its flights on Wednesday.

The announcement suggests Southwest, in most regards considered the best-managed company in the domestic airline business, is having difficulty dealing with maintenance and recordkeeping problems that led to sanctions by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Southwest, which has about 530 737s in its fleet, was fined $10.2 million by the agency last week for continuing to fly planes after the carrier had discovered it had failed to perform required inspections. The proposed fine is a F.A.A. record.

Southwest did not say, in a statement issued on Wednesday, whether the 38 grounded planes were part of that prior problem, which involved inspections to detect cracks on the fuselage. A spokeswoman could not immediately be reached.

Well, it ain't cause they were out of peanuts, I'll bet.