Southwest Air Cancellations: Another Black Eye For Boeing

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 4, 5:37AM EDT · Published Apr 2, 4:04PM EDT

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Southwest (NYSE: LUV) canceled 300 flights today as it inspects 79 of its fleet of Boeing (NYSE: BA) 737s. Southwest made it clear that Boeing will be a part of the process.

Southwest probably did not damage the planes over the last two decades, which leaves the question of whether the aircraft have mechanical problems. A Southwest 737 was forced to make an emergency landing Friday after it developed a rip in its skin after leaving Phoenix.

Southwest said early this morning it is working with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to determine the cause of a depressurization event during a Phoenix- Sacramento flight on Friday that diverted to Yuma, Ariz. Overnight, the airline worked with engineers from the Boeing Company to further assess the damage to the aircraft and develop an inspection regimen to look more closely at 79 (not 81 as was previously reported) of its Boeing 737 aircraft which are covered by a set of Federal Aviation Administration Airworthiness Directives aimed at inspections for aircraft skin fatigue. Those aircraft will be inspected over the course of the next several days at five locations.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.