Southwest plan crack

Some employees sued the company over the unpaid leave, and a federal judge in Fort Worth, Texas, has temporarily blocked the airline from going forward with its plan.

American Airlines management "indicated that, unlike the approach taken by United, they were exploring accommodations that would allow employees to continue to work," the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, the union that represents American's mainline cabin crews, said in a note to members Monday. The Fort Worth, Texas-based airline confirmed to employees Tuesday that they can continue to work if they are granted an exemption or if their exemption requests are still being reviewed.

Those workers could have to follow certain protocols, like wearing a mask and providing regular health declarations, however. American also told staff to apply for exemptions as soon as possible, writing in an internal staff post about the mandate that the "process to review all requests will take time, as we want to ensure we give full consideration to all requests.

Choosing not to be vaccinated and not receiving an exemption may still result in termination, American said. It is not planning voluntary leaves or early retirement packages for those who choose not to get vaccinated. The Allied Pilots Association, which represents American's roughly 14, pilots, wrote to the White House and several key lawmakers on Sept.

Hundreds of Southwest employees, customers and other protesters demonstrated Monday against the vaccine mandate outside Southwest Airlines' headquarters in Dallas, The Dallas Morning News reported.

Southwest's Goldberg and Weber told staff that if an employee's request for exemption is denied, the employee can reapply if the employee "has new information or circumstances it would like the Company to consider. The incident was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal. Breaks in the skin of aluminum-body jets such as the Boeing are usually caused by fatigue or wear and tear.

Maintenance experts say fatigue cracks are not uncommon in older planes, and inspections are designed to find them and repair them before they become safety problems.

In , metal fatigue created a hole in the roof of a Southwest jet as it cruised 35, feet over West Virginia. The crack started where two sheets of aluminum skin were bonded together. Two years later, a 5-foot-long hole ripped opened in another Southwest , forcing pilots to make an emergency landing at a military base in Arizona. No one was injured in those incidents, but in an Aloha Airlines flight attendant was blown out through a hole of a Boeing as it flew over the Pacific Ocean.

That prompted tougher inspection rules. The airline was trying to make arrangements to get the 76 passengers on Flight to Newark on another plane. The timing of the incident could hardly be worse for Dallas-based Southwest, the nation's fourth-biggest airline.

Company executives said last week that ticket sales have slowed since the April 17 engine failure that sent debris flying into another Boeing , breaking a window and killing a passenger, Jennifer Riordan, 43, of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

After the Philadelphia emergency landing, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered inspections of more jet engines like the one that blew apart at 32, feet on that jet. The National Transportation Safety Board believes that one of the engine blades snapped on the Southwest flight, hurling debris that broke a window.

Riordan died of injuries suffered after she was partially sucked out of a window that had been broken by shrapnel. The jet, which was headed from New York to Dallas, made an emergency landing in Philadelphia.

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