I flew ninety times last year. Ninety times I boarded a plane, sat down, buckled up, and landed safely on the other side. The majority of those fights were on a fine, lower priced airline called Southwest Airlines. Yesterday I read this.

“The FAA accused Southwest of operating the 47 airplanes last year without conducting mandatory checks for fuselage cracking…”

The FAA issued a statement saying that Southwest improperly inspected the planes for cracks, then allowed them to fly an additional 1,451 flights, knowing they weren’t airworthy…

…The FAA documents states that Southwest flew at least 117 of its planes in violation of mandatory safety checks. The 117 number includes the 47 planes alleged to have flown without fuselage checks and 70 additional planes allegedly flown without mandatory rudder inspections.

In some cases, the documents say, the planes flew for 30 months past government inspection deadlines. It should have grounded them until the inspections could be completed…

I wonder how many of those planes I was on.