Southwest Grounds Over 70 Flights For Inspection

If you were planning on flying Southwest in the next couple of days, check your flight status. In light of Friday's incident where a five-foot hole tore in the roof of one of the airline's Boeing 737-300s, Southwest has announced it is inspecting 79 planes and grounding 70 of today's flights. They should be done late Tuesday. So far, Southwest has found similar cracks in two planes.

Many other airlines have similar planes -- and Southwest has 169 in total. Deutsche Lufthansa, the second-largest operator of the planes, say theirs have a different configuration than Southwest's. Plus, Southwest has a pretty unfortunate history with maintenance problems. Regardless, Boeing is encouraging airlines to inspect not just their 737-300s, but 400s and 500s, as well. No word on whether other airlines are actually doing this, but Boeing hasn't released their service bulletin yet -- just an email statement.

Despite its problems, Southwest remains one of the best-rated airlines in the country, with the smallest number of customer complaints per 100,000 customers.