The Department of Transportation fined Frontier Airlines for late-arriving flights and sued Southwest Airlines on Wednesday, claiming the airline operated flights that were frequently delayed.
The case comes after JetBlue Airways was fined $2 million by the DOT for similar claims.
The Biden administration, which has taken a more aggressive stance on consumer safeguards than past administrations, is coming to a close with the lawsuit and fines.
According to the DOT, between April and August 2022, Southwest’s flights from Baltimore to Cleveland and Chicago Midway International Airport to Oakland, California, arrived late about 200 times.
According to the DOT, Southwest was to blame for over 90% of the disruptions, with each flight experiencing chronic delays for five months in a row.
If a flight is operated at least ten times each month and arrives more than half the time more than thirty minutes late, it is considered chronically delayed. Cancellations and diversions are included in the computation.
According to the DOT’s lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Oakland, California, it is imperative that an airline modify its schedule when it is aware that a specific aircraft is frequently running late. However, Southwest has frequently opted to forego such changes in favor of continuing to advertise their flights with exaggerated timetables. Southwest has seriously harmed its customers by doing this.
Southwest responded by expressing disappointment that DOT decided to bring legal action on two flights that took place over two years ago.
The airline claimed to have flown more than 20 million flights since the DOT’s chronically delayed flight regulation was announced in 2009, with no policy infractions. According to a statement from Southwest, “any claim that these two flights represent an unrealistic schedule is simply not credible when compared with our performance over the past 15 years.”
In a separate case, the DOT fined low-cost airline Frontier $650,000 for running flights that were frequently delayed. However, the agency also said that $325,000 would be postponed provided Frontier did not operate any flights that were routinely delayed for the next three years. Frontier chose not to respond.
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