Keep an eye on your Southwest Airlines flights after 40 were canceled Sunday due to inspections
If you have reservations on any Southwest Airlines flights leaving from the Dallas-Fort Worth area in the coming days, you might want to keep a close eye on possible flight delays — or even cancellations.
Southwest said it had to cancel about 40 flights across their entire network on Sunday due to fan blade inspections out of a planned schedule of almost 4,000 flights.
On Monday morning, Southwest said it had no information on local flight delays or cancellations. It said it's on track to complete its inspection program covering all its Boeing 737 planes within 30 days from the beginning of the inspections, which started last Tuesday.
In a statement released Sunday, Southwest said it notified customers last Tuesday that there might be an impact because of the inspections.
"We have minimized flight disruptions this past week through actions such as proactive aircraft routings to cover open trips, performing inspections overnight, and utilizing spare aircraft, when available. The cancellations are minimal (roughly 1 percent of scheduled flights)," the airline said in the statement.
The news of the inspections Tuesday came a day after a Southwest Airlines flight from New York's LaGuardia Airport bound for Dallas had one of its twin engines suddenly explode. The impact of the explosion rained debris along the side of the jet and shattered the window next to Jennifer Riordan of Albuquerque. Riordan was killed as a result of blunt impact trauma.
Officials reported that the plane made an emergency landing in Philadelphia following the accident. None of the other 148 people on board suffered severe injuries. A preliminary investigation into the accident by The National Transportation Safety Board revealed that the cause was linked to one of the engine fan blades snapping.
On Friday, the airline sent an apology letter, a $5,000 check and a $1,000 travel voucher to passengers who were on the flight.
Southwest said Sunday that the cancellations did not occur because of Friday night's Emergency Airworthiness Directive from the Federal Aviation Administration. The airline maintained that the cancellations were the result of the voluntary, accelerated engine fan blade inspection program.
This story was originally published April 22, 2018 at 3:40 PM with the headline "Keep an eye on your Southwest Airlines flights after 40 were canceled Sunday due to inspections."