I doubt this story will get a lot of interest here per se, but it’s come out that Southwest was allowed to continue operating planes by the FAA despite some FAA officials being aware that these planes had missed mandatory safety inspections. These planes had not undergone mandatory inspections, and by FAA regulations should have been grounded.
This is a link to a CNN.com article on this story. Some of the planes were operating more than 30 months after inspections deadlines had passed.
Two safety inspectors inside the FAA who have applied for “whistle-blower” status apparently found problems with some planes and then discovered that many Southwest planes were long overdue for inspections.
It looks at least possible from the article that some higher-ups in the FAA May have let Southwest miss these deadlines and continue operating the aircraft, implying possible legal implications for those FAA officials.
Some of the planes had “4-inch” cracks in the fuselage, apparently cracks much smaller are cause for concern.
It is worth mentioning that when the U.S. airline industry was losing billions of dollars, Southwest was the only carrier to continue operating at a profit. In fact I believe (though this may no longer be true) that Southwest has recorded a net profit every quarter of every year since the late 1970s. They’ve also never had a crash–although they did have one accident at Chicago Midland a few years ago.
Edit: It’s worth mentioning that the Wall Street Journal has reported that Southwest voluntarily disclosed this information to the FAA some months ago, and that the FAA was okay with Southwest’s actions at the time. But now it looks like they may be pursuing fines against the airline which could range from $3m-10m.