HERO PILOT PRAYS FOR FAMILY
SOUTHWEST CAPTAIN TELLS HERALD SHE ‘MOURNED LOSS’ OF PASSENGER
The hero pilot who made an emergency landing in Philadelphia after an engine exploded told the Herald last night she and the crew met to pray together for the lone passenger killed in the midair disaster.
Captain Tammie Jo Shults, 56, was at the controls when her Southwest Airlines twin-engine Boeing 737, bound for Dallas, blew an engine, with shrapnel from the explosion shattering a window.
Passenger Jennifer Riordan, 43, a Wells Fargo executive from New Mexico who grew up in Vermont, was partially sucked out the window but was pulled back in by passengers. She died of blunt impact injuries to her head, neck and torso, the Philadelphia coroner announced last night.
Shults said in a text message to the Herald last night: “We (as a crew) mourned her loss. Met and prayed for her family this morning.”
Shults added she “cannot speak” further about the explosion that is now under intense investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.
But passengers jumped on social media, praising her for having “nerves of steel” after Shults safely landed Flight 1380 at Philadelphia International Airport. It had taken off from La Guardia Airport in New York.
“She is an American hero,” passenger Alfred Tumlinson, 55, told the Herald last night. He and his wife were in the back of the plane. “She was so professional. She had an engine out, a lady hurting, a hole in the fuselage. You can’t believe how calm she was.
“She’s nerves of steel. She’s up there with Captain Sully (Sullenberger),” he added of the famous pilot who splashed down his US Airways jet on the Hudson River in 2009.
Tumlinson, who was in New York City for a gala event for his wife’s Texas insurance company, said Shults was a godsend.
“She didn’t fly that plane alone,” he said. “She had someone with her. I’m talking about the man upstairs. He was flying with her.”
Shults was among the first female fighter pilots in the U.S. military, according to friends.