Woman killed by ‘impact trauma’

THE passenger sucked out of the window of a Southwest plane died of blunt impact trauma to the head, neck and torso, a coroner says.

Jennifer Riordan, a bank executive and mother-of-two, was killed after the engine blew and hurled shrapnel at a plane window, which she was partially sucked out of.

A retired nurse has told of the terrifying moment when Mrs Riordan was hurled through the window.

Peggy Phillips was sitting a row in front of Mrs Riordan when the engine exploded on Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 from New York to Dallas on Tuesday.

Ms Phillips told US network ABC despite everyone’s best efforts, Mrs Riordan could not be saved.

Firefighter Andrew Needum and Tim McGinty, a ranch hand who was travelling with his wife, helped pull her back inside the plane.

“The window had broken and the suction, the negative pressure, had pulled her outside the plane partially,” she said. “These two wonderful men, the EMT and a passenger, managed to get her back inside the plane and we lay her down and we started CPR.”

Mr McGinty told the TV network FOX 4 what happened.

“The engine went out and we had a lady go out the window and we couldn’t pull her in,” he said.

“A guy helped, we got her pulled in. They tried to resuscitate her.”

“Some heroes wear capes, but mine wears a cowboy hat,” Mr McGinty’s wife told USA Today.

Ms Phillips abandoned her own oxygen mask to help revive Mrs Riordan but there was little that could be done.

“If you can possibly imagine going through the window of an aeroplane at about 600mph (965km/h), 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,” she said.

“I don’t consider myself a hero by any stretch, but there were heroes on that plane. I just did what I do.”

Despite their efforts, Mrs Riordan was pronounced dead at a Philadelphia hospital after the plane made an emergency landing.

Mrs Riordan was an executive for the bank Wells Fargo and was on her way home from a business trip when she died.