Midair engine emergency
A damaged Southwest Airlines jetliner sits on a runway at Philadelphia International Airport after one of its engines blew out at 30,000 feet, showering the plane with shrapnel that smashed a window. One passenger was killed.
PHILADELPHIA — A Southwest Airlines jet on Tuesday blew an engine at 32,000 feet and got hit by shrapnel that smashed a window, setting off a desperate scramble by passengers to save a woman from getting sucked out. She later died, and seven others were injured.
Passengers dragged the woman back in as the sudden decompression of the cabin pulled her part way through the opening, but she was gravely injured.
The pilots of the plane, a twin-engine Boeing 737 bound from New York to Dallas with 149 people aboard, made an emergency landing in Philadelphia just before noon as passengers using oxygen masks that dropped from the ceiling said their prayers and braced for impact.
“I just remember holding my husband’s hand, and we just prayed and prayed and prayed,” said passenger Amanda Bourman of New York. “And the thoughts that were going through my head of course were about my daughters, just wanting to see them again and give them a big hug so they wouldn’t grow up without parents.”
The dead woman was identified as Jennifer Riordan, a Wells Fargo bank executive and mother of two from Albuquerque, N.M. The seven other victims suffered minor injuries.
The National Transportation Safety Board sent a team of investigators to Philadelphia.
In a late night news conference, transportation agency Chairman Robert Sumwalt said a preliminary examination of the engine showed evidence of “metal fatigue.” One of the engine’s fan blades was separated and missing, he said.
The engine will be examined further to understand what caused the failure.
Southwest said Tuesday that as a precaution it would inspect similar engines in its fleet over the next 30 days.
Passengers commended one of the pilots, Tammie Jo Shults, for her handling of the emergency. She walked through the aisle and talked with passengers after the plane touched down.
“She has nerves of steel. That lady, I applaud her,” said Alfred Tumlinson, of Corpus Christi, Texas. “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.”
Tracking data from FlightAware.com showed Flight 1380 was heading west over Pennsylvania at about 32,200 feet and traveling 500 mph when it abruptly turned toward Philadelphia.
Bourman said she was asleep near the back when she heard a loud noise and oxygen masks dropped.
“Everybody was crying and upset,” she said. “You had a few passengers that were very strong, and they kept yelling to people, you know, ‘It’s OK! We’re going to do this!’”
In a recording of conversations between the cockpit and air traffic controllers, an unidentified crew member is heard saying that there was a hole in the plane and that she was told “someone went out.”
Tumlinson said a man in a cowboy hat rushed forward a few rows “to grab that lady to pull her back in. She was out of the plane. He couldn’t do it by himself, so another gentleman came over and helped to get her back in the plane, and they got her.”
Another passenger, Eric Zilbert, an administrator with the California Education Department, said: “From her waist above, she was outside of the plane.”
Passengers struggled to plug the hole while giving the badly injured woman CPR.
Passengers did “some pretty amazing things under some pretty difficult circumstances,” Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Adam Thiel said.
The crew started yelling to brace for impact as the plane came in for a landing, Bourman said. She said passengers clapped and praised the pilot after the aircraft touched down.
The last time a passenger died in an accident on a U.S. airliner was 2009, when 49 people onboard and one on the ground were killed when a Continental Express plane crashed on a house near Buffalo, N.Y.
Southwest has about 700 planes, all of them 737s, including more than 500 737700s like the one in Tuesday’s accident. It is the world’s largest operator of the 737. The 737 is the best-selling jetliner in the world and has a good safety record.
The jet’s CFM56-7B engines were made by CFM International, jointly owned by General Electric and Safran Aircraft Engines of France.
CFM said it sent experts to help National Transportation Safety Board investigators.
Last year, the engine-maker and the Federal Aviation Administration instructed airlines to make ultrasonic inspections of the fan blades of engines like those on the Southwest jet. The FAA said the move was prompted by a report of a fan blade failing and hurling debris. But it was unclear if the particular engine that failed Tuesday was covered by the directives.
Information for this article was contributed by Kristen de Groot, Claudia Lauer, Matthew Barakat, Monika Mathur and Jennifer Farrar of The Associated Press.