{"id":3793,"date":"2019-02-18T19:17:45","date_gmt":"2019-02-19T01:17:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planesintheair.com\/?p=3793"},"modified":"2019-02-18T19:17:51","modified_gmt":"2019-02-19T01:17:51","slug":"faa-investigates-southwest-over-baggage-weight-discrepancies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/?p=3793","title":{"rendered":"FAA Investigates Southwest over baggage weight discrepancies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">(Reuters)\n &#8211; The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is investigating Southwest \nAirlines Co for widespread failure to accurately track the combined \nweight of checked bags loaded onto its jets, the Wall Street Journal \nreported on Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The\n U.S. aviation safety agency&#8217;s year-long civil probe found systemic and \nsignificant mistakes with employee calculations and luggage-loading \npractices, resulting in potential discrepancies when pilots compute \ntakeoff weights, the Journal reported, citing government officials and \ninternal agency documents<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The\n FAA has not decided whether to impose fines or any other punishment, \nthe report cited people familiar with the investigation as saying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The\n inaccuracies ranged from a few dozen pounds to more than 1,000 pounds \n(450 kg) in excess of what the paperwork indicated, sparking disputes \nbetween the company and some agency inspectors about potential safety \nconsequences, the report said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A\n company spokeswoman said there was an open Letter of Investigation \n(LOI), which is a common mechanism for the FAA to document and share \nsafety interests or concerns with an airline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The\n airline has not been issued fines and faces no enforcement action \nregarding its weight and balance program, Southwest spokeswoman Brandy \nKing said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;In\n this case, the LOI addresses an issue that Southwest voluntarily \nreported to the FAA last year and since that time, Southwest has \nimplemented controls to address weight and balance program concerns, and\n shared those measures with the FAA,&#8221; King said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The FAA said in a statement it initiated a probe against Southwest in 2018 regarding weight and balance performance data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Since\n that time, the FAA has directed the development of a comprehensive \nsolution to the methods and processes used by Southwest Airlines to \ndetermine this performance data,&#8221; it said in the statement. &#8220;The FAA \nwill not close its investigation until it is satisfied that Southwest\u2019s \ncorrective actions are consistent and sustained.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">(Reporting by Rama Venkat in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Peter Cooney)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Southwest-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3797\" width=\"610\" height=\"406\" srcset=\"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Southwest-1.jpg 970w, https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Southwest-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Southwest-1-768x511.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 610px) 100vw, 610px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is investigating Southwest Airlines Co for widespread failure to accurately track the combined weight of checked bags loaded onto its jets, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[797,89,2203,868,1103],"tags":[1690,118,160,3457,3456,3453,2672,2359,1898,3458,3459,412,960,1288,2120,186,2730,3454,3254,3455],"class_list":["post-3793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-airline-news","category-aviation-news","category-finance-news","category-transportation-news","category-travel-news","tag-administration","tag-airlines","tag-aviation","tag-bags","tag-checked","tag-combined","tag-federal","tag-investigation","tag-jets","tag-journal","tag-letter","tag-news","tag-report","tag-reuters","tag-safety","tag-southwest","tag-street","tag-track","tag-wall","tag-weight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3793"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3798,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3793\/revisions\/3798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}