Southwest Airlines to restart B737 MAX ops in late 1Q21

Southwest Airlines (WN, Dallas Love Field) has announced that it will resume scheduled B737-8 operations on March 11, 2021, following an extensive internal retraining programme and a series of validation flights without passengers. The low-cost carrier said that it would initially operate the B737 MAX 8s on a fixed set of routes, separate from its pool of B737NGs. “We’ll be starting out in a very small and focused manner for the first month with just ten lines of flying. They’ll be isolated to all-MAX lines. We will not co-mingle the NG and the MAX fleet for that first month of service. After that, we’ll have roughly sixty-five MAX aircraft available for service, and we expect to be in normal operational mode by mid-April,” Chief Operating Officer Mike Van de Ven said during the carrier’s annual earnings call. Southwest Airlines has yet to file schedules or publicly disclose the ten routes where its B737 MAX 8s will be deployed. According to the ch-aviation fleets advanced module, the LCC currently has forty-five B737 MAX 8s in storage and operating validation flights, including 11 delivered since the type’s ungrounding in November 2020. It is awaiting the delivery of a further 221 B737-8s (including 219 directly from Boeing and two via SMBC Aviation Capital), as well as thirty B737-7s. Van de Ven disclosed that the carrier hoped to have sixty-nine B737 MAX in its fleet by the end of 2021. “We do not have an updated order book to provide beyond 2021 as we are still in discussions with Boeing to restructure our longer-term order book,” Chief Financial Officer Tammy Romo added. The carrier pointed out that even as it had idled aircraft on the ground due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it looked forward to replacing its older fleet with more fuel-efficient B737 MAX units to lower its cost base. Southwest Airlines is set to become the last current operator of the type in the United States to resume B737 MAX operations. American Airlines has already resumed the type’s services while United Airlines is set to do so in mid-February 2021. Alaska Airlines, will launch, rather than resume, B737-9 operations on March 1.