After JetBlue was fined $2 million for “illegal chronic flights”, the US Department of Transportation (DOT) is now eying Southwest Airlines and Frontier Airlines over the same issue.
The DOT announced the lawsuit against Southwest on 15 January, the airline being sued for “illegally operating multiple chronically delayed flights and disrupting passengers’ travel”, the government agency said in a statement, adding that unrealistic schedules can harm both passengers and fair competition across the airline industry.
“As part of our commitment to supporting passenger rights and fairness in the market for airline travel, we are suing Southwest Airlines for disrupting passengers’ travel with unlawful chronic flight delays”, said US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “Airlines have a legal obligation to ensure that their flight schedules provide travellers 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.”
DOT’s investigation found that Southwest operated two chronically delayed flights – one between Chicago Midway International Airport and Oakland, Calif, 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.
The Bureau of Transportation Statistics estimates, based off 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, according to the agency, leading to the lawsuit.
On the same day, the DOT also announced Frontier had been fined for operating multiple chronically delayed flights with $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.
Continuing to market a flight that has been chronically delayed for more than four consecutive months is one form of unrealistic scheduling, the DOT explains. Under the agency’s 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 also are included as delays within this calculation.
According to the agency, 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.
