Feds sue Southwest Airlines over chronic flight delays

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — The U.S. Department of Transportation and the Department of Justice sued Southwest Airlines Wednesday afternoon in San Francisco federal court over chronically delayed flights.

“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,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is named in the lawsuit as a plaintiff, said in a statement. “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.”

The 9-page complaint singles out Southwest flights from Chicago Midway to Oakland, California, as well as flights between Baltimore and Cleveland. The Department of Transportation claims flights on these routes arrived late 180 times alone in the period between April 2022 and August 2022, meaning that each flight was chronically delayed for five consecutive months.

The department seeks “maximum civil penalties” from the lawsuit. It claims Southwest violated the unrealistic scheduling rule on at least 58 separate occasions. That rule prohibits airlines from operating flight schedules that are not realistic and is intended to protect passengers from unfair and deceptive practices

“Continuing to market a flight that has been chronically delayed for more than four consecutive months is one form of unrealistic scheduling," the department said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “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 percent of the time. Cancellations and diversions are included as delays within this calculation.”

Each violation of the unrealistic scheduling rule carries a maximum penalty of $37,377, potentially  putting Southwest on the hook for over $2 million in damages.

“When an airline knows that a particular flight is consistently late, it is essential that the airline adjusts its schedule. But on many occasions, Southwest has chosen not to make such adjustments, and instead has continued to market its flights using unrealistic schedules. By doing so, Southwest has caused significant harm to its customers,” the department says in its complaint.

In a statement, Southwest defended its performance and punctuality.

“Since DOT issued its Chronically Delayed Flight (CDF) policy in 2009, Southwest has operated more than 20 million flights with no other CDF violations. Any claim that these two flights represent an unrealistic schedule is simply not credible when compared with our performance over the past 15 years," the airline said. “In 2024, Southwest led the industry by completing more than 99% of its flights without cancellation.”

The case was assigned to U.S. Senior District Judge Susan Illston, an appointee of Bill Clinton.

Southwest wasn’t the only airline that caught the government’s ire Wednesday, as the Department of Transportation also announced that it was penalizing the low-cost carrier Frontier Airlines for chronically delayed flights.

Frontier Airlines was fined $650,000, but the Department of Transportation said it would only have to pay $325,000 immediately, and the remainder would be forgiven if the airline did not operate any chronically delayed flights in the next three years.

Also this month, the Department of Transportation slapped JetBlue with a $2 million fine for chronically delayed flights.