THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, MARCH 13, 2008
NEWS
11A
AIRLINES
Southwest grounds 41 flights across U.S.
Southwest Airlines said it grounded 41 planes Tuesday, in the wake of its recent admission that it had missed required inspections of some planes for structural cracks. Southwest faces a $10.2 million civil penalty, the largest the FAA has ever imposed.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
BY DAVID KOENIG ASSOCIATED PRESS
DALLAS — Southwest Airlines Co. canceled flights Wednesday and temporarily grounded 41 planes to examine if they were sound enough to carry passengers, the latest twist in the low-cost carrier's saga of missed safety inspections and civil penalties.
The groundings affected about 8 percent of Southwest's fleet, and came as the airline faces a $10.2 million civil penalty for continuing to fly nearly 50 planes that hadn't been inspected for cracks in their fuselages.
Southwest shares fell more than 9 percent before closing down 7.3 percent.
Since the Federal Aviation Administration announced the penalty last week, Southwest has endured a steady drip of bad publicity, which is unusual for the nation's most consistently profitable carrier and one that has never had an accident that killed passengers or crew members.
On Wednesday, word filtered out that the airline had taken 38 planes out of service, along with five others that were already in hangars undergoing routine maintenance. That's about 8 percent of Southwest's fleet.
Spokeswoman Linda Rutherford said Southwest took the action after getting clarification from manufacturer Boeing Co. on Tuesday night about the type of inspection — visual or magnetic, or a combination of both — needed for areas around the windows on some older Boeing 737-300 and 737-500 jets.
By late Wednesday afternoon, Rutherford said, 25 planes had undergone the 90-minute inspection at maintenance bases in Dallas, Houston, Chicago and Phoenix and returned to service.
Rutherford said the remainder of the 38 taken off tarmacs were expected to be back flying by Wednesday night. A 44th plane covered by the Boeing instructions had already been retired, she said.
Southwest had canceled 139 flights by late Wednesday afternoon, or about 4 percent of its scheduled flights for the day, according to Flightstats.com, which tracks airline operations.
The company said it had 520 Boeing 737 jets at the end of last year. Nearly 200 of them are older models, the Boeing 737-300, that were supposed to undergo extra inspections for cracks in the fuse-lage.
The FAA said Acting Administrator Robert A. Sturgell met Wednesday with Southwest Chief Executive Gary Kelly, who gave a briefing on the steps the airline is taking to comply with inspection orders. The FAA is conducting its own review.
Sturgell has acknowledged that the FAA should have grounded the jets last year, when Southwest itself reported that it had inadvertently missed inspections of the fuselages on its all-Boeing fleet. He has said that "at least one FAA inspector looked the other way."
Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., chairman of a House committee looking into the actions of both the airline and the FAA, said this week's groundings and fresh inspections raised serious questions about the FAA's follow-up to the missed examinations last year.
Beyond Wednesday's canceled
flights — airline officials said they expected to operate a normal schedule on Thursday — it was unclear what impact the unfolding events might have on Southwest's ticket sales and reputation.
Ted Marzilli, an executive at consumer-surveying firm BrandIndex, said Southwest's ratings have held up despite nearly a week's worth of bad publicity. But Wednesday's news of airplanes being grounded and flights canceled could change things for the worse, he said.
"At first this was something that happened a year ago, there were no injuries, and it was being corrected." Marzilli said. "This new story prolongs the news cycle and has the potential to do more serious impact to the Southwest brand."
But Paul Biederman, a former chief economist at TWA who now teaches at New York University, said Southwest appeared to be taking charge by announcing earlier this week that it was suspending three employees. He predicted the fallout would be short-lived.
"There wasn't an accident. Nobody got hurt or killed," he said. "It'll go away unless something else
The $10.2 million penalty is the largest the FAA has ever imposed on a carrier. Most of the amount was related to charges that Southwest for several days last year continued to put passengers on planes that it knew had not been properly inspected.
happens, like we find out cracks weren't repaired."
Southwest has said it will appeal. CEO Kelly, who earlier announced an internal investigation into the missed inspections, said Wednesday that Southwest has a clean record over its 37-year history.
"We have been a safe company. I believe we are a safe company," he said. "I am committed to making sure we become safer still."
Parents ignoring vaccine face prison
HEALTH
Southwest shares fell 91 cents to end at $11.49 in trading on Wednesday after they earlier fell to a 52-week low of $8.87.
BY MARIA CHENG ASSOCIATED PRESS
LONDON (AP) _ As doctors struggle to eradicate polio worldwide, one of their biggest problems is persuading parents to vaccinate their children. In Belgium, authorities are resorting to an extreme measure: prison sentences.
"I am innocent, I want justice and fairness," said Jawad, who spoke through a Pashto translator and asked the judge whether journalists could hear his statements. "Since I was arrested I've been treated unfairly. I have been tortured. I am a human being."
The only specifics he offered were that he's had a "bleeding lip" for more than a year and he said he suffers from constant headaches from the bright lights in his prison cell.
Two sets of parents in Belgium were recently handed five-month prison terms for failing to vaccinate their children against polio. Each parent was also fixed $8,000.
The highly infectious disease is spread through water and mainly strikes children under five. Initial symptoms include fever, headaches, vomiting, stiffness in the neck and fatigue. The polio virus invades the body's nervous system and can lead to irreversible paralysis within hours. In extreme cases, patients can die when their breathing muscles are immobilized.
Jawad, who wore the orange uniform reserved for the least compliant detainees, later slammed down his translation headphones and put his head down on the desk.
"The parents in this case do not have any rights they can appeal to. They have obligations they are not fulfilling."
In combative exchanges with the judge, Jawad said he has been mistreated at Guantanamo Bay — where the U.S. military holds about 275 men suspected of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban — and denounced the tribunal system as unjust.
most states allow children to opt out if their parents have religious or "philosophical" objections.
The parents' sentences were delayed to give them a chance to vaccinate their children. But if that deadline also passes without the children receiving the injections, the parents could be put behind bars.
In Maryland, prosecutors and school officials in one county threatened truancy charges against parents who failed to vaccinate their children. The measure sharply reduced the number of unvaccinated children although no one has been charged.
The only other case of mandatory polio vaccines is during the Muslim yearly Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. Pilgrims from poli-oendemic countries must prove they have been vaccinated. Saudi officials even give them an extra dose upon arrival at the airport.
"Nobody has the right to unfettered liberty, and people do not have a right to endanger their kids," said John Harris, a professor of bioethics at the University of Manchester.
MILITARY
He did not enter a plea to charges of attempted murder and intentionally causing serious bodily injury, which could lead to a maximum sentence of life in prison.
BY MICHAEL MELIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
Since the polio virus can live in the human body for weeks, it jumps borders easily. That makes health officials even in developed countries nervous, since the threat of an outbreak remains as long as the virus is circulating anywhere.
"It's a pretty extraordinary case," said Dr. Ross Upshur, director of the Joint Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto. "The Belgians have a right to take some action against the parents, given the seriousness of polio, but the question is, is a prison sentence disproportionate?"
The polio vaccine is the only one required by Belgian law. Exceptions are granted only if parents can prove their children might have a bad physical reaction to the vaccine. There are no exceptions for people who object to vaccinations on religious grounds.
Aside from Belgium, only France makes polio vaccinations mandatory by law. In the United States, children must be immunized against many diseases including polio, but
"Polio is a very serious disease and has caused great suffering in the past," said Dr. Victor Lusayu, head of Belgium's international vaccine center. "The discovery of the vaccine has eliminated polio from Europe and it is simply the law in Belgium that you have to be vaccinated. ... At the end of the day, the law must be respected."
Because of privacy laws, Belgian officials would not talk specifically about the cases, such as why the parents refused the vaccine or how much longer they have to get their children vaccinated.
Some ethicists back the hard-line Belgian stance.
Mohammed Jawad, who is accused of throwing a grenade that wounded two U.S. soldiers, initially refused to attend his first pretrial hearing, delaying its start. After he appeared in the courtroom, the judge, Marine Col.Ralph Kohlmann, warned Jawad that if he does not attend future sessions he could still be tried, convicted and sentenced in absentia.
Afghan detainee protests trial
In a phone interview, one of those wounded in the attack, former Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Martin, said he should never be let out of U.S. military custody.
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) _ An Afghan detainee said Wednesday that he wants to boycott his trial at Guantanamo Bay and railed against the proceedings as unfair and illegal.
The hearing inside the hilltop courthouse overlooking the Caribbean was delayed more than two and a half hours after Jawad initially refused to attend. Kohlmann ordered his ankles to remain shackled during the hearing because he was not cooperating fully.
The judge also excused Jawad's Pentagon-appointed defense attorney, Army Col. James Sawyers, who asked to be removed from the case because he is leaving active-duty service. He said the effort to find a replacement could cause a delay in bringing the case to trial.
The military plans to prosecute about 80 of the roughly 275 prisoners held at this U.S. base in southeast Cuba on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban. So far, roughly a dozen have been charged and none of the cases has gone to trial.
He is accused of throwing a homemade hand grenade into a jeep carrying two U.S. soldiers and their interpreter in Kabul, the Afghan capital, in 2002. The three were wounded.
Jawad said he was 16 when he was arrested and did not understand some of the rules the judge explained to him.
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