A Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 takes off from Los Angeles International Airport en route to Las Vegas on September 19, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.
Kevin Carter | Getty Images
The Department of Transportation filed a lawsuit on Wednesday Southwest Airlinesalleging that the airline operated chronically delayed flights and was fined Border airlines for late arriving flights.
The lawsuit follows a $2 million DOT fine JetBlue Airways for similar accusations.
The lawsuit and fines come at the end of the Biden administration, which has taken a harder line on consumer protections than previous administrations.
The DOT said Southwest's flights from Chicago Midway International Airport to Oakland, California, and from Baltimore to Cleveland arrived late nearly 200 times between April and August 2022.
The DOT said every flight was chronically delayed for five consecutive months and that Southwest was responsible for more than 90% of the disruptions.
It defines a flight as chronically delayed if it is flown at least ten times a month and arrives more than 30 minutes late more than half of the time. The calculation includes cancellations and diversions.
“If an airline knows that a particular flight is consistently late, it is essential that the airline adjust its flight schedule,” the DOT said in its lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Oakland, California. “But on many occasions, Southwest has chosen not to make such adjustments and has instead continued to market its flights on unrealistic schedules. By doing so, Southwest has caused significant harm to its customers.”
In response, Southwest said it is “disappointed that DOT has chosen to file a lawsuit over two flights that occurred more than two years ago.”
The airline said that since the DOT issued its chronically delayed flight policy in 2009, the airline has operated more than 20 million flights without violating the policy. “Any claim that these two flights represent an unrealistic schedule is simply not credible compared to our performance over the past fifteen years,” Southwest said in a statement.
In addition, the DOT fined budget carrier Frontier $650,000 for operating chronically delayed flights, although it added that $325,000 would be suspended if the airline does not operate repeatedly delayed flights over the next three years. Frontier declined to comment.