Southwest voluntarily accelerated inspections of CFM engine fan blades throughout their Boeing 737-700/-800 fleet. “We are on track to inspect all CFM engine fan blades on the -700s and -800s within 30 days of our proactive inspection program initiated on Tuesday, April 17, 2018,” the company said in a statement released earlier this week. “We anticipate minimal delays or cancellations each day this week due to the inspections.” They said they were minimizing flight disruptions by performing the inspections at night while aircraft are not flying and utilizing spare aircraft during the day, when available.
Southwest said they only canceled about 40 flights due to fan blade inspections out of a planned schedule of 4,000 flights, roughly one percent of scheduled flights. However, Flightaware.com put the number of canceled Southwest flights slightly higher at 129 flights on Monday, or three percent of its total flights. About 11 percent of their flight experienced delays
Southwest stressed the cancellations were not because of Emergency AD issued by the FAA but a result of voluntary, accelerated engine fan blade inspection program
Check out a tutorial on removing the CFM fan blades below.