President Trump’s announcement Wednesday that he had ordered the grounding of all Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft means Southwest Airlines – which operates about 400 flights a day in and out of Denver – is pulling 34 of its jets out of service.
That represents less than five percent of the airline’s fleet of more than 750 Boeing 737s, according to a statement posted on Southwest’s twitter page.
Denver is Southwest’s fourth largest hub.
The Max 8’s safety has come into question in the days since an Ethiopian Airlines jet crashed Sunday, killing 157, which prompted several countries to ground the plane. That accident followed the Oct. 29 crash off the coast of Indonesia of a Max 8 operated by Lion Air, which killed all 189 people on board.
The Federal Aviation Administration followed up Trump’s announcement by issuing an order that all Max 8 jets be grounded temporarily “as a result of the data gathering process and new evidence collected at the site and analyzed today.”
“We have been in constant contact with the FAA and Boeing since Ethiopian Airlines’ accident last Sunday,” the Southwest statement said, in part. “While we remain confident in the Max 8 after completing more than 88,000 flight hours accrued over 41,000 flights, we support the actions of the FAA and other regulatory agencies and governments across the globe that have asked for further review of data – including information from the flight data recorder – related to the recent accident involving the Max 8.”
The statement also said Southwest’s goal was to “operate out schedule with every available aircraft in our fleet” but would also offer “flexible rebooking policies.”
“Any customer booked on a cancelled Max 8 flight can rebook on alternate flights without any additional fees or fare differences within 14 days of their original date of travel between the original city pairs,” the statement said.
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