We tried to save
AIRLINE passengers yesterday described the battle to save the life of a woman partially sucked out of a window when an jet engine exploded in mid air.
A fireman and a Texan in a cowboy hat managed to pull Jennifer Riordan back inside the Boeing 737 where an off-duty nurse battled in vain to save the mother of two’s life.
Travellers also praised captain Tammie Jo Shults for her “nerves of steel” after she calmly landed the plane despite having only one working engine. It later emerged that Mrs Shults used to be a Top Gun fighter pilot in the US Navy.
Mrs Riordan, 43, a bank executive from Albuquerque, New Mexico, was killed and seven others were injured on the Southwest Airlines plane as it headed for Dallas, Texas.
Flight 1380 took off from New York’s LaGuardia airport on Tuesday at 10.27am with 144 passengers and five crew on board.
About 20 minutes into the flight and at 32,000ft passengers heard an “incredibly loud noise” as an engine blew apart.
Shrapnel from it smashed a window on the left-hand side of the plane above the wing, causing the cabin to depressurize and the oxygen masks came down.
Trauma
Terrified passengers used wi-fi to send messages to say goodbye to their loved ones.
Flight attendants and passengers desperately tried to save Mrs Riordan after pulling her back in.
Max Kraidelman, 20, a passenger on the plane, said: “The top half of her torso was out the window. There was a lot of blood because she was hit by some of the shrapnel coming off the engine.”
Stetson-wearing passenger Tim McGinty was sitting across the aisle from Mrs Riordan.
He said: “We saw the window was gone and somebody saw the lady out the window so we tried to get her back in and I wasn’t strong enough. A fireman jumped in and helped and between the two of us we got her back in.
“It seemed like two minutes and it seemed like two hours.
“They were having to drop the plane 20,000ft in five minutes, the pilots. “I don’t know how they did it.” The fireman was Andrew Needum, from Celina, Texas.
After dragging Mrs Riordan back in he was helped by Peggy Phillips, an off-duty nurse.
Ms Phillips said: “We lay her down and we started CPR. If you can possibly imagine going through the window of an airplane at about 600mph and hitting either the fuselage or the wing with your body, with your face. I can probably tell you that there was significant trauma to the body. Significant head trauma, facial trauma.”
Her life could not be saved. But Mrs Shults, 56, stayed calm and brought the plane down in Philadelphia without further injuries.
In remarkable air traffic control recordings she can be heard saying coolly: “So we have part of the aircraft missing so we’re going to need to slow down a bit.”
She was asked if the plane was on fire and responded: “No, it’s not on fire, but part of it is missing. They said there’s a hole and someone went out.”
Aviation analyst Stephen Gaynard said that the emergency landing she carried out was the “toughest” thing a pilot could do.
Describing the chaos in the cockpit, he said: “The pilot will see the fire light, warnings saying ‘descend, descend’.
“You don’t know if the airplane is flying and you’re telling air traffic control to get everyone out the way because you’re flying