South­west Air­lines is imme­di­ate­ly com­ply­ing with today’s FAA require­ment for all U.S. air­lines to ground the Boe­ing 737 MAX 8. As a result, we have removed our 34 MAX 8 air­craft from sched­uled ser­vice. South­west oper­ates a fleet of more than 750 Boe­ing 737s, and the 34 MAX 8 air­craft account for less than five per­cent of our dai­ly flights.

We have been in con­stant con­tact with the FAA and Boe­ing since Ethiopi­an Air­lines’ acci­dent last Sun­day. While we remain con­fi­dent in the MAX 8 after com­plet­ing more than 88,000 flight hours accrued over 41,000 flights, we sup­port the actions of the FAA and oth­er reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies and gov­ern­ments across the globe that have asked for fur­ther review of the data – includ­ing infor­ma­tion from the flight data recorder – relat­ed to the recent acci­dent involv­ing the MAX 8.

The Safe­ty of our Cus­tomers and Employ­ees is our uncom­pro­mis­ing pri­or­i­ty, and today’s action reflects the com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing the cur­rent inves­ti­ga­tions and reg­u­la­to­ry concerns.

Our goal is to oper­ate our sched­ule with every avail­able air­craft in our fleet to meet our Cus­tomers’ expec­ta­tions dur­ing the busy spring trav­el sea­son. Addi­tion­al­ly, to sup­port our Cus­tomers, South­west is offer­ing flex­i­ble rebook­ing poli­cies. Any Cus­tomer booked on a can­celled MAX 8 flight can rebook on alter­nate flights with­out any addi­tion­al fees or fare dif­fer­ences with­in 14 days of their orig­i­nal date of trav­el between the orig­i­nal city pairs. A Trav­el Advi­so­ry with addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion for Cus­tomers will be post­ed on Southwest.com.

“Dur­ing our 48-year his­to­ry, South­west has con­tin­u­ous­ly demon­strat­ed our com­mit­ment to Safe­ty,” said Gary Kel­ly, South­west­’s Chair­man of the Board and Chief Exec­u­tive Officer.

“We sin­cere­ly appre­ci­ate the trust our Cus­tomers and Employ­ees place in our air­line every day, and the South­west Team is work­ing dili­gent­ly to min­i­mize dis­rup­tions to our Cus­tomers’ trav­el plans.”

Mean­while, Unit­ed Air­lines said it believed it could com­ply with the order with no “sig­nif­i­cant” oper­a­tional impact to its cus­tomers.

Noth­ing is more impor­tant to us than the safe­ty of our cus­tomers and employ­ees. As we have said since Sun­day, we have been in close con­tact with inves­ti­ga­tors as well as Boe­ing to share data and ful­ly coop­er­ate with reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ties. We will com­ply with the FAA’s order and will ground our 14 Boe­ing 737 MAX air­craft. We will remain in close con­tact with author­i­ties as their inves­ti­ga­tion continues.

Since Sun­day, we have been work­ing dili­gent­ly on con­tin­gency plans to pre­pare our fleet to min­i­mize the impact to customers.

Our Boe­ing 737 MAX air­craft account for rough­ly 40 flights a day and through a com­bi­na­tion of spare air­craft and rebook­ing cus­tomers, we do not antic­i­pate a sig­nif­i­cant oper­a­tional impact as a result of this order. We will con­tin­ue to work with our cus­tomers to help min­i­mize any dis­rup­tion to their trav­el plans.

Alas­ka Air­lines, the Pacif­ic North­west­’s largest car­ri­er and the only big U.S. air­line based in Cas­ca­dia, does not yet fly the 737 MAX, so it is unaf­fect­ed by the jet’s ground­ing. How­ev­er, Alas­ka does have a num­ber of the jets on order.

It would have been pru­dent for the FAA to have made this deci­sion on Sunday.

Now the Unit­ed States looks like a lag­gard instead of the leader it says it is.

Once again, the Trump regime has failed the peo­ple of the Unit­ed States.

Not only did the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion fail to swift­ly ground the 737 MAX when it should have on Sun­day after the crash of EA 302, but it turns out that work Boe­ing was under­tak­ing to improve the soft­ware pow­er­ing MAX’s flight con­trol sys­tem was delayed by Trump’s ludi­crous deci­sion not to sign leg­is­la­tion to keep the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment ful­ly open for busi­ness and func­tion­ing properly.