Southwest Airlines (WN, Dallas Love Field) declared an "operational emergency" on February 15, 2019 over an unusually high number of aircraft grounded due to maintenance issues, CBS11 has reported.
The low-cost said that around 40 aircraft per day, or over 5% of its fleet, were grounded for maintenance. The number of groundings was double the normal average. Southwest immediately issued an "all hands on deck" appeal to its mechanics and warned that unexcused absences will lead to terminations. Despite this, the situation caused multiple major delays and cancellations.
As the situation continues, the carrier issued a statement indirectly blaming the mechanics' unions for the disruption.
"Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) has a history of work disruptions, and Southwest has two pending lawsuits against the union. We will be investigating this current disruption and exploring all possible remedies," Chief Operating Officer Mike Van de Ven said.
Van de Ven added that the airline will seek to outsource as much as possible of its scheduled maintenance work to approved third-party contractors. In turn, its in-house mechanics will be assigned to unscheduled events.
"The out-of-service aircraft were driven primarily from four of our 20 maintenance locations and by a subset of our entire mechanic workforce. The number of aircraft out of the fleet has driven cancellations, in some cases extremely long delays and other operational impacts over the last week," Van de Ven added.
Southwest has been unsuccessfully negotiating a new collective agreement with the AMFA for the last six years.