The federal government sued Southwest Airlines on Wednesday, accusing the airline of harming passengers flying on two routes that have been hit by constant delays through 2022.
In a lawsuit, the Transportation Department said it is seeking more than $2.1 million in civil penalties on flights between airports in Chicago and Oakland, Calif., as well as Baltimore and Cleveland. which was delayed for five months that year.
“Airlines have a legal obligation to ensure that flight schedules provide passengers with realistic departure and arrival times,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement. one. “Today’s action sends a message to all airlines that the department is prepared to go to court to enforce passenger protections.”
Carriers are prohibited from operating unreasonable flight schedules, which the Department of Transportation considers to be unfair, deceptive and anti-competitive practices. A “long-haul” flight is defined as one that operates at least 10 times per month and is delayed at least 30 minutes more than half of the time.
In a statement, Southwest said it was “disappointed” the airline chose to sue over the flight that happened more than two years ago. The airline says it has flown 20 million flights since the Transportation Department instituted its anti-delayed flight policy nearly a decade ago, with no other violations.
“Any claim that these two flights show unreasonable schedules is simply not credible when compared to our performance over the past 15 years,” Southwest said.
Last year, Southwest canceled less than 1 percent of its flights, but more than 22 percent arrived at least 15 minutes later than scheduled, according to airline data provider Cirium. Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Alaska Airlines and American Airlines all had smaller delays.
The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. In it, the government said that the Southwest flight from Chicago to Oakland arrived at the end of 19 of the 25 trips in April 2022, with a delay of more than an hour. The constant delays, averaging an hour or more, continued until August of that year. On another flight, between Baltimore and Cleveland, the average delay reached 96 minutes per month during this period. In a statement, the department said Southwest, not bad weather or air traffic control, was responsible for 90 percent of the delays.
“Keeping these flights delayed ignores the customer’s need to have reliable information about when their flights will arrive and harms thousands of passengers on these Southwest flights by disrupting their plans.” travel or other plans,” the department said in the lawsuit. .
The government said Southwest violated federal rules 58 times in August 2022 after four months of continuous delays. Each violation carries civil penalties of up to $37,377, or more than $2.1 million in total, according to the lawsuit.
The Department of Transportation on Wednesday also said it has fined Frontier Airlines for delayed flights, fining the airline $650,000. Half of this amount was paid to the Treasury and the rest was set to be forgiven if there were no more flight delays in the next three years.
This month, the agency ordered JetBlue Airways to pay $2 million in fines for failing to resolve such delayed flights for more than a year through November 2023, half of which will go to passengers who were delayed.
