One passenger was killed when an engine blew out on a Southwest Airlines jetliner carrying 149 people, marking the first fatality on a US-registered airline in more than nine years.
The plane, bound for Dallas' Love Field airport from New York’s LaGuardia airport on flight WN1380, made an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport on Tuesday. The Associated Press identified the woman who died as Jennifer Riordan, a vice president of community relations for Wells Fargo & Co in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Seven people suffered minor injuries.
“This is a sad day,” Southwest chief executive officer Gary Kelly said on a video released by the company. “On behalf of the whole Southwest family, I want to extend our deepest sympathies to the family and loved ones of our deceased customer.”
Other passengers reported a woman being severely injured during the flight and receiving aid from other passengers in a chaotic and bloody scene.
The cabin suddenly lost pressure when engine debris pierced a window and flight attendants began crying, one passenger, Marty Martinez, founder and CEO of Social Revolt digital marketing in Dallas, said in an interview.
“When we saw that they started crying, of course we thought we were in a really bad place. We were going down,” Martinez said. The woman who was injured “made no noise at all,” he said.
Nine-year record
Riordan was a mother of two, according to the AP. In a LinkedIn profile, she said she managed volunteer service by almost 1,700 employees at non-profits in New Mexico and helped represent the company in the community.
The death shattered an unprecedented string of more than nine years without an accident-related fatality on a US passenger airline. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chairman Robert Sumwalt confirmed the fatality at a press conference as he was set to depart from Washington to Philadelphia with a team of investigators.
The last fatal accident involving a US-registered carrier occurred near Buffalo, New York, on Feb 12, 2009, when a commuter carrier operated by Colgan Air crashed, killing 49 people on board and a man on the ground.
The NTSB has secured the Southwest plane’s two black box, crash-proof recorders and plans to ship them to its lab in Washington on Tuesday night, Sumwalt said. The agency is sending experts in engines, airline operations and passenger survival issues, he said.
Southwest revised the total of people on board the flight late Tuesday, from 148 to 149 including five crewmembers.
Television feeds and photos posted on Twitter show the front of the left engine on the Boeing 737-700 had been ripped open.
The Federal Aviation Administration halted some arrivals and departures at the Philadelphia airport but reopened it, according to an agency website. The crew of the plane reported that it suffered damage to its fuselage and at least one window, according to the FAA.
The plane had been aloft for about 30 minutes when an explosion shattered the routine and oxygen masks descended from the ceiling, Martinez said. He and others took to social media, using the plane’s Wi-Fi connection, trying to leave final messages in case the plane crashed.
“I kind of just felt like it was over,” he said. “We’re flying at 30,000 feet going 500 miles an hour.”
Reports of shrapnel shattering a window suggest that the engine broke apart in what is known as an “uncontained” failure. US regulations require engines to be covered in tough casings designed to prevent metal from flying into fuel tanks and passenger areas if an engine breaks apart.
Sumwalt said the NTSB doesn’t have enough information yet to call the failure uncontained.