Southwest Airlines Hawaii Flights On Hold Due to Government Shutdown

Add Southwest Airlines and Southwest customers to the long list of people who are not happy with the airlines/government-shutdown-drastically-impacting-airport-security-lines.html” target=”_self” rel=”nofollow”>government shutdown.

Southwest Airlines has been waiting a long time to begin airlines/southwest-airlines-hopeful-to-begin-service-to-hawaii-in-early-2019.html” target=”_self” rel=”nofollow”>flights to Hawaii and it appears the government shutdown is going to make that wait longer.

To begin the Hawaii routes, the airline needs to complete the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) certification process for extended overwater flights, which is referred to as ETOPS approval. FAA workers who manage these approvals are on furlough like many other federal workers.

Before the shutdown, Southwest received some ETOPS approvals like those that dealt with proposed procedures and manuals, but it didn’t receive approval on “validation” flights in time before the shutdown.

Despite the hold-off on Hawaii flights, Brian Parrish, a Southwest spokesman, said that the airline is continuing to prepare for Hawaii internally.

“We are ready to continue the ETOPS application process when the FAA is allowed to resume full certification activities,” the airline said in a statement Monday, reported USA Today.

Southwest planned to sell tickets in late 2018 and have flights to Hawaii debuting in early 2019, but until they receive full ETOPS certification, customers must wait patiently for tickets to go on sale.