The Department of Transportation (DOT) on Friday rescinded an $11 million penalty on Southwest Airlines imposed during the Biden administration.
The order from DOT amends its 2023 directive, which fined Southwest $140 million, $35 million of which was due to the U.S. Treasury in three installments. Southwest made the first two payments, of $12 million each, in February 2024 and January 2025.
With the latest order, though, the airline is no longer required to pay the final $11 million installment to the Treasury. Instead, Southwest received an $11 million credit for improving its on-time performance and percentage of flights completed without disruptions, or completion fa…
The Department of Transportation (DOT) on Friday rescinded an $11 million penalty on Southwest Airlines imposed during the Biden administration.
The order from DOT amends its 2023 directive, which fined Southwest $140 million, $35 million of which was due to the U.S. Treasury in three installments. Southwest made the first two payments, of $12 million each, in February 2024 and January 2025.
With the latest order, though, the airline is no longer required to pay the final $11 million installment to the Treasury. Instead, Southwest received an $11 million credit for improving its on-time performance and percentage of flights completed without disruptions, or completion factor, the order states.
The department, in initially penalizing Southwest, cited its failure to provide prompt or proper refunds, prompt flight status notifications and adequate customer assistance after winter storms caused flight disruptions in December 2022 and January 2023.
Of the remaining $105 million levied on Southwest, $72 million will be offset in exchange for $90 million in customer vouchers DOT ordered Southwest to provide from April 2024 to April 2027, while $33 million was credited to the company after it issued 25,000 Rapid Reward points to impacted passengers.
The guidance adds that Southwest invested more than $1 billion in operational performance and reliability improvements since the storm, including more than $112.4 million in its network operations control system.
The DOT noted that over the first nine months of this year, Southwest ranked third among the 10 largest U.S. commercial airlines in on-time performance and completion factor. In 2022, the company ranked sixth and eighth in these categories, respectively.
The most recent data released by the department shows that as of July, 77.5 percent of Southwest flights have arrived on time this year, ranking fourth on that list.
Southwest said in a statement that it is “grateful to [Transportation] Secretary [Sean] Duffy and the DOT Team for recognizing Southwest’s significant investments in modernizing our operations.”
“During the last two years, Southwest successfully completed an operational turnaround that directly benefits our Customers with industry leading on-time performance and percentage of completed flights without cancellations,” the company added.
In May, the Justice Department dismissed a case against Southwest brought by DOT under former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. The DOT had alleged that Southwest advertised unrealistic flight schedules despite chronic delays in 2022.
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