Pilot calmly lands Southwest flight with broken engine
The pilot’s voice was calm yet focused as her plane descended with 149 people on board.
“Southwest 1380, we’re single engine,” Tammie Jo Shults, a former fighter pilot with the
US Navy, said. “We have part of the aircraft missing so we’re going to need to slow down a bit.” She asked for medical personnel to meet her aircraft on the runway. “We’ve got injured passengers.”
“Injured passengers, okay ■ and is your aeroplane physically on fire?” asked a male voice on the other end, according to an air traffic recording.
“No, it’s not on fire, but part of it’s missing,” Shults said, pausing for a moment. “They said there’s a hole, and uh, someone went out.”
The engine on Shults’s plane had, in fact, exploded on Tuesday, spraying shrapnel into the aircraft, causing a window to be blown out and leaving one passenger dead and seven others injured. Frightened passengers on board the Dallas-bound flight braced for impact as oxygen masks muffled their screams.
In the midst of the chaos, Shults successfully completed an emergency landing at the Philadelphia International Airport, sparing the lives of 148 people and averting a far worse catastrophe.
“She has nerves of steel, “one passenger, Alfred Tumlinson, said. “That lady, I applaud her. I’m going to send her a Christmas card — I’m going to tell you that — with a gift certificate for getting me on the ground. She was awesome.”
Another passenger, Diana McBride Self, thanked Shults on Facebook for her “guidance and bravery in a traumatic situation.” She added that Shults “came back to speak to each of us personally. This is a true American Hero,” she wrote. Others on social media agreed, even comparing Shults with Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who glided his US Airways plane to safety in New York’s Hudson River in 2009.
Southwest declined to name the pilot, though passengers confirmed Shults’s name on social media, and Shults’s mother-inlaw told The Washington Post she was the pilot.