Posted 3/06/2008 05:22:00 PM by Douglas

With rare exception, no one wants to die in a plane crash, so most Southwest passengers might take interest in this story:

The Federal Aviation Administration proposed a record penalty, $10.2 million, against Southwest Airlines on Thursday because, it said, the carrier had misled officials about whether it kept flying older Boeing 737 planes for several days last year after failing to inspect them for cracks in the fuselage.

At least one F.A.A. employee was aware of Southwest’s misrepresentation, an agency spokeswoman, Diane Spitalieri said, and told the airline that it could keep flying the 737s but should inspect them as soon as possible. A supervisor at the F.A.A. who was aware of the arrangement has been removed from that job, the spokeswoman said.

So for whatever reason, the FAA knew about it, right? Sure SWA shoulda inspected (at the very least) but if the government oversight authority has information and authority to shut down operations, aren't they equally as culpable for endangering the public? SWA has a lot more to lose from a crashed plane than the FAA does, and the FAA has about as much to do with preventing a plane crash as the "employees much wash hands" sign does at keeping pee-pee out of the salad bar at Pizza Hut. So fine yourself, FAA.

Ms. Spitalieri said that four of the planes turned out to have four-inch cracks, big enough to require repairs, though no problems occurred when they were in use.

The airline said that it had found “the start of small cracking” on six planes.

F.Y.I. : There's no such thing as a small crack in the fuselage of any plane that I'm on. I'm just sayin'.

“We continued flying with the concurrence of F.A.A. and the F.A.A.’s approval of our plan to bring ourselves back into compliance,” Ms. Rutherford said.

She added that the airline had inspected “99.4 percent” of the area it was supposed to, but, because of an error in the computer program that tells inspectors what tasks to accomplish, skipped 0.6 percent.

“This was never an issue of a safety-of-flight concern,” she said.

Again, 0.6% is pretty small. . . . unless it's your plane!

Boeing, the builder of the planes, issued a statement Thursday saying that Southwest had asked it to verify that is was safe to fly the planes for up to 10 days until they could be reinspected.

“Boeing concluded the 10-day compliance plan was technically valid,” the statement said. “In Boeing’s opinion, the safety of the Southwest fleet was not compromised.”

So it looks like SWA and the FAA both dropped the ball on this, but it seems silly to fine them $10 million at this point. Of course, if this story was leaked after a SWA 737 crash, the settlement would be closer to $10 Billion.

Just get us there and don't crash. Is that too much to ask? And get rid of the honey roasted peanuts. They're terrible.