Southwest Airlines has a maintenance issue with over three dozen of their 737 airliners

Welcome to the Conversation at AirSafe.com. I'm your host, Todd Curtis.

On November 11, 2019, the Wall Street Journal published an article about the FAA's concern

that Southwest Airlines may have been flying about three dozen aircraft that had improper maintenance documentation.

All of these aircraft had been previously owned by non-U.S. airlines.

Later that day, I had a conversation with KNX Radio of Los Angeles,

where I discussed the current Southwest problem, as well as past problems involving maintenance documentation.

This is Southern California's only 24-hour local news and traffic station, KNX 1070 News Radio.

This is KNX In-Depth. I'm Mike Simpson.

And I'm Charles Feldman.

Reports that Southwest Airlines may have to ground at least three dozen of its jets

because it has failed to certify fixes made by foreign mechanics.

We'll go in-depth.

Todd Curtis, the CEO of AirSafe.com.

He was a longtime safety engineer at Boeing.

Todd, what exactly is this problem with Southwest?

Well, first, thanks for having me on today.

It seems as though the problem is largely a paperwork problem.

The aircraft in question were manufactured by Boeing, of course, as all 737s are.

But they spent part of their lives overseas before Southwest brought them into the fleet.

And the problem boils down to what kind of repairs were made, and is there documentation on those repairs?

No real question about the repairs. There are questions about the documentation.

Okay, so there may be some gaps here or there.

And Southwest seems pretty confident that, yes, the planes were repaired in the way they were supposed to.

And have they been checked out since they got back here?

About half of the planes that they have acquired from overseas have been checked.

There are roughly three dozen that don't have their paperwork in order.

And those are the ones that are the focus of the FAA and the Senate Inspector General,

excuse me, the Inspector General at the FAA, over whether or not the documentation was done correctly on this.

And if there were any other regulations,

that were violated.

So these were planes that, and correct me if I'm wrong, were used by foreign carriers, is that right?

So they're used aircraft, essentially.

That's correct.

Why are they buying these to begin with, or using them?

It's a question of availability.

Southwest has a fleet of over 700 aircraft, and they are the biggest customer for the 737 anywhere in the world.

But still, they need to add aircraft to deal with surges in demand.

And it can't be done with just new aircraft.

And of course, with the 737 MAXs no longer being delivered for the time being,

there's a real need to have their capacity filled by some sort of aircraft.

And used aircraft from overseas are a great option.

Is it usually the other way around?

Whereas when a plane's done here, it goes overseas instead of coming back the other direction?

That has been the case for decades.

That is, the initial carrier for an aircraft, whether it be a U.S. carrier or an overseas carrier,

would sell that aircraft to a secondary market.

And in this case, it's a secondary market.

In this case, some of the markets are secondary markets.

That is, not Western Europe or Canada.

But some of the aircraft did come from markets that typically take new aircraft.

As I'm sure you know, Southwest, of course, is a major carrier for this market, Southern California.

How concerned, should they be concerned, ought passengers to be?

Well, the concern for the passengers would be justified if the FAA finds out that there's something untoward going on

beyond just paperwork.

If, in fact, there were indeed aircraft that had substandard repairs that put passengers at risk,

that would be a concern.

Do we know if any of these planes have been in the shop more often than some of the others?

I mean, would that give you a clue if there have been some problems along the way?

I have no record and no indication from the FAA of any emergency landings, unscheduled repairs,

or anything else that would indicate that the aircraft were somehow or another a dangerous aircraft to fly.

There are standard repairs that happen at various intervals,

and so far there's no indication that those are happening more quickly either.

Why is it that we didn't hear these sort of things, I don't know, 10, 15, 20 years ago?

Did they happen and we just weren't savvy to them, or is something fundamentally changed?

The only thing that's fundamentally changed from 10 to 20 years ago is the ability of the media,

both traditional media and new social media, to get news of this out to a wide audience quickly.

These kinds of issues with repair stations,

which are authorized by the FAA and could be in countries all over the world,

issues where these repair stations may not have the paperwork in order,

that's cropped up on occasion.

But I can't recall any occasion where that led to a dangerous airplane being let loose in front of the public.

Todd Curtis, CEO of airsafe.com.

He was a longtime safety engineer at Boeing.

Now, in responding to the FAA's October letter,

Southwest's director of regulatory affairs,

regulatory compliance indicated the airline does consider the issue a paperwork problem rather than a safety risk.

Southwest, he wrote, is taking steps to reduce the risk of regulatory noncompliance rather than an elevated safety risk.

Southwest has told the FAA each of the 38 planes has already gone through extensive regular maintenance since joining the fleet.

For more on airline safety and security, please visit airsafe.com.

Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.