US DOT Files Case Against Southwest for Delayed Flights

Trouble is brewing for the Southwest Airlines as the US Department of Transportation (DOT) has announced a lawsuit against the airline for illegally operating multiple chronically delayed flights and disrupting passengers’ travel.

Operating chronically delayed flights is an unrealistic scheduling practice and can harm both passengers and fair competition across the airline industry. DOT’s lawsuit against Southwest seeks maximum civil penalties.

The US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that as part of their commitment to supporting passenger rights and fairness in the market for airline travel, they were suing Southwest Airlines for disrupting passengers’ travel with unlawful chronic flight delays.

“Airlines have a legal obligation to ensure that their flight schedules provide travelers with realistic departure and arrival times. Today’s action sends a message to all airlines that the Department is prepared to go to court in order to enforce passenger protections,” he said on Wednesday.

DOT also took enforcement action against Frontier Airlines today for operating multiple chronically delayed flights. DOT fined Frontier $650,000 in civil penalties with $325,000 to be paid to the US Treasury and the remaining $325,000 to be suspended if the carrier does not operate any chronically delayed flights in the next three years.

Federal regulations prohibit airlines from promising flight schedules that do not reflect actual departure and arrival times.

Unrealistic scheduling is considered an unfair, deceptive, and anticompetitive practice that disrupts passengers’ travel plans, denies them reliable scheduling information, and allows airlines to unfairly capture business from competitors by misleading consumers.

Continuing to market a flight that has been chronically delayed for more than four consecutive months is one form of unrealistic scheduling.

Under DOT rules, a flight is chronically delayed if it is flown at least 10 times a month and arrives more than 30 minutes late more than 50% of the time. Cancellations and diversions are included as delays within this calculation.

Complaint Against Southwest

DOT’s investigation found that Southwest operated two chronically delayed flights – one between Chicago Midway International Airport and Oakland, California, and another between Baltimore, Md. and Cleveland, Ohio – that resulted in 180 flight disruptions for passengers between April and August 2022. Each flight was chronically delayed for five straight months.

in April 2022, Southwest’s Flight 1029 from Chicago, Illinois to Oakland, California arrived late on 19 of 25 trips by an average of over an hour. But Southwest did not adjust the schedule and instead, it continued to market the flight with an unrealistic schedule.

The next month, Flight 1029 continued to be delayed, arriving late 16 out of 27 trips by an average delay of 80 minutes and over the next three months, this flight was always late more than half of the time, and the average delay always exceeded one hour.

“Southwest engaged in similar scheduling practices with respect to a flight from Baltimore, Maryland to Cleveland, Ohio. This flight was late more than half the time for at least five consecutive months, with average monthly delays as high as 96 minutes,” the DOT said in its complaint.

The Bureau of Transportation Statistics estimates, based off of data submitted to DOT by Southwest, that the airline was responsible for more than 90% of the disruptions for the two chronically delayed flights.

Regardless of the cause of the disruption for any specific flight, DOT rules provide airlines adequate time to fix their schedule after a flight becomes chronically delayed in order to avoid illegal unrealistic scheduling. Southwest failed to fix the chronically delayed flights.