Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 MAX aircraft are parked on the tarmac after being grounded, at the Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville, California on Hike 28, 2019.
Mark Ralston | AFP | Getty Images
Southwest Airlines on Thursday took the Boeing 737 Max out of its schedules until Feb. 8, later than any U.S. airline, as the low-cost bearer called the timeline for the plane’s return to service “still uncertain.”
That’s a month later than it previously contemplated.
The lack of clarity on when regulators will allow airlines to operate the planes, grounded since mid-March after the secondly of two fatal crashes that killed a total of 346 people, have forced airlines to repeatedly change their outlines.
Southwest’s pilots said last week they didn’t expect the Max to return until February at the earliest.
American and Combined last week said they don’t expect to fly the planes until January, about a month later than they hitherto forecast. Airline executives say it is easier to cancel 737 Max flights ahead of time than scramble at the last memorandum latest to rebook passengers and crews. Air Canada on Wednesday said it would take the plane off its schedule until Feb. 14, citing “regulatory uncertainty round the timing of the aircraft returning to service.”
Pressure is mounting on Boeing to get approval for the return of the aircraft to commercial service, but aviation bona fides say they have no firm timeline to do so. Crash investigators implicated flight control software that misfired, over pushing the nose of the planes down on both doomed flights. Boeing has developed a fix but hasn’t yet handed it over to regulators for absolute review.
Airlines with the Max in their fleets say they have lost out on hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue due to the foundation.
Boeing in July took a nearly after-tax $5 billion charge to compensate airlines, but a total is still unfamiliar as the grounding passes the seven-month mark.