Dive Brief:

• The head of the Department of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, is suing Southwest Airlines alleging unfair and deceptive trade practices for operating flights that experienced serial delays, and agreed to a settlement in which Frontier Airlines will pay a $650,000 civil penalty over chronically delayed flights.
• The lawsuit comes in the final days of the Biden administration, a period in which Buttigieg has focused the department on tougher regulatory enforcement of airlines than they experienced in prior administrations. Earlier this month, the DOT issued its first enforcement action over chronically delayed flights, assessing JetBlue Airways a $2 million penalty.
• Southwest is “disappointed” by the lawsuit relating to two flights in 2022, a spokesman said Thursday in an email. “Any claim that these two flights represent an unrealistic schedule is simply not credible when compared with our performance over the past 15 years,” the company said. A Frontier spokeswoman declined to comment on the civil penalty.

Dive Insight:

The federal lawsuit, filed in Oakland, Calif., alleges that Southwest marketed two flights for several months in 2022 that were late by more than an hour on multiple occasions. The U.S. and Buttigieg, in his capacity as Transportation Secretary, are named as plaintiffs.

The DOT defines a chronically delayed flight as one flown at least 10 times monthly that arrives late by at least 30 minutes more than half the time it operates in that month.

The complaint identified two Southwest flights — Baltimore to Cleveland and Chicago to Oakland — as examples where the airline marketed the flights consistently without changing its scheduling to mitigate chronic delays. 

“When an airline knows that a particular flight is consistently late, it is essential that the airline adjusts its schedule,” the government complaint says. “But on many occasions, Southwest has chosen not to make such adjustments, and instead has continued to market its flights using unrealistic schedules. By doing so, Southwest has caused significant harm to its customers.”

Southwest ranked fourth among the 10-largest U.S. airlines for on-time arrivals in the DOT’s year-to-date rankings most recently updated through September 2024, with 76% of its flights on time.

The carrier paid a $140 million DOT penalty stemming from its operational meltdown over the December holidays in 2022. During that period Southwest canceled nearly 17,000 flights amid an inability to handle winter weather in several locations, which decimated its overall operation.

Southwest said it has operated more than 20 million flights since the DOT began tracking and enforcing chronically delayed flights in 2009 without a violation. The Dallas-based airline also said it topped the U.S. industry last year by completing more than 99% of its flights without cancellation. 

“Southwest has kept an open dialogue with DOT and continues to invite the agency to engage in discussions about a reasonable settlement,” the company said.

The department has ended its prior practice of sending airlines warning letters about chronically delayed flights, ahead of enforcement action, according to the DOT’s Jan. 3 consent decree with JetBlue.

In its action against Frontier, the department cited 63 flights between St. Thomas and Orlando; Atlanta-Phoenix; and Orlando-Houston over 12 months ending April 2023.

As part of the consent decree, Denver-based Frontier did not admit liability and said it was agreeing to the settlement to avoid litigation. The low-cost carrier also told the agency it has installed “more robust procedures” and is investing in new software to better track its on-time and completion performance in its flight operations.

Frontier will pay half of the civil penalty and will avoid the other half if it makes timely payment and complies with the consent’s cease and desist edict concerning delayed flights.