Southwest Airlines will extend cancellations of Boeing 737 Max flights until mid-April, the company said Tuesday, amid ongoing uncertainty about when the aircraft will be allowed to return to service.
Southwest, which is the nation’s largest 737 Max customer, will be pulling approximately 300 flights a day from a peak-day schedule in excess of 4,000 flights, the airline said in a news release. Customers who have booked these flights will be notified and reassigned to other planes. Last week, American Airlines extended its 737 Max cancellations until early April, after the Federal Aviation Administration said it wouldn’t approve the aircraft’s return for the remainder of 2019.
The 737 Max has been grounded worldwide since March, under scrutiny following two crashes within five months that killed 346 people. Since the grounding, Boeing has continued producing the jets at a cost of $1.5 billion each month, in hopes the FAA would sign off on their return to use. But Boeing announced Wednesday that it was halting production on the 737 Max indefinitely starting in January, a stoppage that could ripple throughout the economy and jeopardize tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs.
A Southwest spokesman said the decision to extend the Max cancellation was unrelated to Boeing halting production of the jetliner, as the airline has been evaluating the situation on a rolling 30-day basis.