DOT Sues Southwest Airlines for Chronically Delayed Flights

DOT’s lawsuit alleges that Southwest’s chronic flight delays were an illegal unrealistic scheduling practice  

News Release from USDOT, Wednesday, January 15, 2025

WASHINGTON – Today, the United States and U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) announced a lawsuit against Southwest Airlines for illegally operating multiple chronically delayed flights and disrupting passengers’ travel. Operating chronically delayed flights is an unrealistic scheduling practice and can harm both passengers and fair competition across the airline industry. DOT's lawsuit against Southwest seeks maximum civil penalties.

“As part of our commitment to supporting passenger rights and fairness in the market for airline travel, we are suing Southwest Airlines for disrupting passengers’ travel with unlawful chronic flight delays,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “Airlines have a legal obligation to ensure that their flight schedules provide travelers with realistic departure and arrival times. Today's action sends a message to all airlines that the Department is prepared to go to court in order to enforce passenger protections.”

DOT also took enforcement action against Frontier Airlines today for operating multiple chronically delayed flights. DOT fined Frontier $650,000 in civil penalties with $325,000 to be paid to the U.S. Treasury and the remaining $325,000 to be suspended if the carrier does not operate any chronically delayed flights in the next three years.

Federal regulations prohibit airlines from promising flight schedules that do not reflect actual departure and arrival times. Unrealistic scheduling is considered an unfair, deceptive, and anticompetitive practice that disrupts passengers’ travel plans, denies them reliable scheduling information, and allows airlines to unfairly capture business from competitors by misleading consumers. Continuing to market a flight that has been chronically delayed for more than four consecutive months is one form of unrealistic scheduling. Under DOT rules, a flight is chronically delayed if it is flown at least 10 times a month and arrives more than 30 minutes late more than 50 percent of the time. Cancellations and diversions are included as delays within this calculation.

DOT’s investigation found that Southwest operated two chronically delayed flights – one between Chicago Midway International Airport and Oakland, Calif, and another between Baltimore, Md. and Cleveland, Ohio – that resulted in 180 flight disruptions for passengers between April and August 2022. Each flight was chronically delayed for five straight months.

The Bureau of Transportation Statistics estimates, based off of data submitted to DOT by Southwest, that the airline was responsible for more than 90% of the disruptions for the two chronically delayed flights. Regardless of the cause of the disruption for any specific flight, DOT rules provide airlines adequate time to fix their schedule after a flight becomes chronically delayed in order to avoid illegal unrealistic scheduling. Southwest failed to fix the chronically delayed flights.

The lawsuit against Southwest was filed jointly with the Department of Justice in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Read the court filing here. 

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AP: U.S. sues Southwest Airlines over chronically delayed flights