Hearing reveals chilling details of fatal Southwest flight

There was a loud bang, and suddenly the Southwest Airlines jet rolled sharply to the left. Smoke began to fill the cabin, and flight attendants rushed row by row to make sure all passengers could get oxygen from their masks.

When flight attendant Rachel Fernheimer got to row 14, she saw a woman strapped in her lap belt but with her head, torso and arm hanging out a broken window.

Fernheimer grabbed one of the woman's legs while flight attendant Seanique Mallory grabbed her lower body. They described being unable to bring the woman back in the plane until two male passengers stepped in to help.

The harrowing details from the April 17 fatal flight were released for the first time as the National Transportation Safety Board began a hearing Wednesday into the engine failure on Southwest Flight 1380, which carried 144 passengers and five crew members.

The flight attendants told investigators at least one of the male passengers put his arm out of the window and wrapped it around the woman's shoulder to help pull her back in. Fernheimer said when she looked out the window, she could see that one of the plane's engines was shattered, and there was blood on the outside of the aircraft.

Flight attendants asked for medical volunteers. A paramedic laid the woman across a row of seats and began chest compressions. They tried a defibrillator but it indicated that there was no shock. The paramedic and a nurse took turns at CPR.

Passengers asked if they were going to die. Fernheimer said she squeezed their hands. "She told them that they were going to make it," an investigator wrote.

Pilots Tammie Jo Shults and Darren Ellisor landed the crippled Boeing 737 in Philadelphia. The passenger in the window seat, Jennifer Riordan, was fatally injured — the first death on a U.S. airline flight since 2009. Eight other passengers including at least one of the men who helped pull Riordan back in the window.

Wednesday's hearing in Washington focused on design and inspection of fan blades on the engine, made by CFM International, a joint venture of General Electric and France's Safran S.A.

An official from CFM defended the design and testing of fan blades like the one that snapped on the Southwest plane as it flew high above Pennsylvania, triggering an engine breakup that flung debris like shrapnel into the plane.