Praise for pilot as mother killed in mid-air crisis
A FORMER fighter pilot has been praised for calmly landing a US passenger plane when its engine blew at 32,000ft, despite a desperate scramble inside to save a woman partially sucked out of one of its windows.
The 43-year-old, named as mother-of-two Jennifer Riordan, inset, was killed after shrapnel smashed the window of the Boeing 737 as it flew from New York to Dallas on Tuesday with 149 people on board.
Fellow passengers have spoken of the desperate fight to save her when she was partially pulled out of the plane by the sudden decompression, but she later died and seven others were injured.
Now, as transcripts from the cockpit emerge of pilot Tammie Jo Shults asking ground officials to prepare emergency services for landing, she has been hailed a hero by those on board.
The pilot of the Southwest Airlines plane had taken it into a rapid descent and made an emergency landing in Philadelphia as passengers using oxygen masks said their prayers and braced for impact.
Pilot Shults, speaking to ground staff, kept calm throughout and simply asked if medical teams could meet on the runway.
“We’ve got injured passengers,” she said and, when asked if the plane was on fire, responded: “Not on fire but part of it is missing.
“They said there’s a hole and someone went out.”
Passengers commended Ms Shults, a former US Navy fighter pilot, for her cool-headed handling of the emergency. She walked down the aisle and talked to passengers to make sure they were OK after the plane touched down.
“She has nerves of steel. That lady, I applaud her,” said Alfred Tumlinson, of 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. She was awesome.”
Amanda Bourman, of New York, said she was asleep near the back of the plane 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!’” Mr 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”.
Eric Zilbert, from California, said: “From her waist above, she was outside of the plane.”
Passengers struggled to plug the hole while giving the badly injured woman CPR.
The National Transportation Safety Board said a preliminary examination of the blown engine from Flight 1380 showed evidence of “metal fatigue”.
In a news conference, NTSB chairman Robert Sumwalt said one of the engine’s fan blades was separated and missing. As a precaution, Southwest said it will inspect engines in its fleet over the next 30 days.
Mr Sumwalt said part of the engine covering was found in Bernville, Pennsylvania, about 70 miles west of Philadelphia. SHE WAS a screen icon like no other, a luminescent beauty who captivated the designer Hubert de Givenchy and dated the future President Kennedy.
So the announcement yesterday that a final auction of more than 200 of Audrey Hepburn’s personal items had been authorised by her family, had memorabilia collectors scurrying to their catalogues to see what might be included.
Christie’s is staging the online auction next month to coincide with what would have been the 89th birthday of the star of and
The ballpoint pen, in a fitted Dior case, which she carried in her handbag from the 1970s until her death at 63, is among the lots.
Other highlights include a letter from Gregory Peck and a sheet of gelatin silver contact prints from her final scene as Holly Golightly in
in 1961. Items from Miss Hepburn’s wardrobe include classicallystyled cultured pearl earrings, which could fetch £12,000.
Her son, Luca Dotti, said she “hated the idea of spending a fortune on diamonds and gold”.
“What she really loved were pearls because of their purity, the fact that they were made by nature,” he said.
Other jewellery in the sale includes a Cartier brooch of her favourite animal, a giraffe.
Fans can also bid for her mini Papillon, Louis Vuitton, make-up bag and the leather pumps she used in her pre-film career as a ballet dancer in wartime western Europe.