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A PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION of a blown jet engine of a Southwest Airlines plane that set off a terrifying chain of events and left a businesswoman hanging half outside a shattered window showed evidence of “metal fatigue”, according to the US National Transportation Safety Board.
Passengers scrambled to save the woman from getting sucked out the window that had been smashed by debris. She later died, and seven others were injured.
The pilots of the twin-engine Boeing 737 bound from New York to Dallas with 149 people aboard took it into a rapid descent yesterday and made an emergency landing in Philadelphia.
Oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling and passengers said their prayers and braced for impact.
“I just remember holding my husband’s hand, and we just prayed and prayed and prayed,” said passenger Amanda Bourman, of New York.
The dead woman was identified as Jennifer Riordan, a Wells Fargo bank executive and mother of two from Albuquerque, New Mexico. The seven other victims suffered minor injuries.
The National Transportation Safety Board sent a team of investigators to Philadelphia.
In a late night news conference, NTSB chairman Robert Sumwalt said one of the engine’s fan blades was separated and missing. The blade was separated at the point where it would come into the hub and there was evidence of metal fatigue, Sumwalt said.
The engine will be examined further to understand what caused the failure. The investigation is expected to take 12 to 15 months.
Photos of the plane on the tarmac showed a missing window and a chunk gone from the left engine, including part of its cover. A piece of the engine covering was later found in Bernville, Pennsylvania, about 112 kilometers west of Philadelphia, Sumwalt said.
As a precaution, Southwest said last night that it would inspect similar engines in its fleet over the next 30 days.
“That lady, I applaud her”
Passengers praised one of the pilots, Tammie Jo Shults, for her cool-headed handling of the emergency.
The former Navy pilot was at the controls when the plane made the emergency landing. She walked through the aisle and talked with passengers to make sure they were OK after the aircraft touched down.
“She has nerves of steel. That lady, I applaud her,” said Alfred Tumlinson, of Corpus Christi, 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.
In a recording of conversations between the cockpit and air traffic controllers, an unidentified crew member reported that there was a hole in the plane and “someone went out”.
Tumlinson said a man in a cowboy hat rushed forward a few rows to grab the woman and 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,” he said.
Passengers struggled to somehow plug the hole while giving the badly injured woman CPR.
As the plane came in for a landing, everyone started yelling to brace for impact, then clapped after the aircraft touched down safely, Bourman said.
No safety concerns
Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said there were no problems with the plane or its engine when it was inspected on Sunday.
The jet’s CFM56-7B engines were made by CFM International, jointly owned by General Electric and Safran Aircraft Engines of France. CFM said in a statement that the CFM56-7B has had “an outstanding safety and reliability record” since its debut in 1997.
Last year, the engine maker and the Federal Aviation Administration instructed airlines to make ultrasonic inspections of the fan blades of engines like those on the Southwest jet.
The FAA said the move was prompted by a report of a fan blade failing and hurling debris. A Southwest spokeswoman said the engine that failed yesterday was not covered by that directive, but the airline announced it would speed up ultrasonic inspections of fan blades of its CFM56-series engines anyway.
“There’s a ring around the engine that is meant to contain the engine pieces when this happens,” said John Goglia, a former NTSB member. “In this case it didn’t. That’s going to be a big focal point for the NTSB — why didn’t (the ring) do its job?”
In 2016, a Southwest Boeing 737-700 blew an engine as it flew from New Orleans to Orlando, Florida, and shrapnel tore a 5-by-16-inch hole just above the wing. The plane landed safely. The NTSB said a fan blade had broken off, apparently because of metal fatigue.
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Horrific way to die and for everyone who witnessed it.
Frightening tragedy, RIP to the person involved
Terrible news to hear that the lady past away. A terrifying ordeal and devastating for her family.
I am a first officer with an Irish airline and I want to give a pat on back to the captain and her crew on what seems to have been a great job.
Her calm response to a serious emergency, and the ability to comfort her passengers afterwards is exactly the response I would expect from all the (great) female pilots I’ve flown with if they were to face a similar situation.
She’s no more or less a hero than had she been male but her performance highlights to a sometimes misogynistic view of our profession what we in the industry all know, women make great pilots.
@Chris: Your colleagues must be very proud of you….well said Chris.
Was she strapped into her seat one wonders..
@Eugene Walsh: I’m guessing not if she was halfway out the window! But most passengers probably wouldn’t have been either as the plane wasn’t taking off or landing.
@Eugene Walsh: I would think highly unlikely. A Hawaiian airliner got a huge puncture and only a small number of people died years ago. Quite likely she may have been walking though the cabin and not seated at all. BA captains window blew on 737 also, he was like this poor woman held onto by others. He got a lot of facial wounds but survived.
@Pascal Coleman: You are told to keep your seat belt on while seated but a lot of idiots pay no attention to safety instructions on boats and in the air.
@Pete Brady: It was a bac 1-11
@Pascal Coleman: she should have been! Cabin crew and pilots always say you should keep your seatbekt fastened even when the sign is nkt illuminated!
@Pascal Coleman: If you’re just sitting, you should always have your belt on. As well as this horrible and very rare event, you can also have a sudden loss of altitude.
R.I.P. to this lady.Accidents happen.Wrong place wrong time.The important thing now is,they learn the cause and fix it.
Have repeatedly queried the adoption of 2 huge jet engines instead of 4 smaller power units, which are less likely to hoover in birds, & in the event of a failure, smaller debris damage.
And why are the engine intakes not protected by “dolphin nose “cowelling, as per some military jets.
@William Kelly: Have you checked the statistics? It makes sense. What makes you think a 4 engined aircraft would have been any different during an explosion. Some military jets you say? Not all….I wonder why. Twin engined aircraft flying all over the globe have helped made airfares everywhere affordable. Anyway this appears it could be Some thing like a part failure and not a bird. I’ll stick with the opinions and research of the 1000s of designers and engineers involved. They are doing excellent work.
@William Kelly: smaller debris damage in the failure of a jet engine ain’t the issue it’s a bit silly really, it’s the speed and force of the debris. As for sucking in birds, not too many turkeys flying round at 40,000 feet.
@William Kelly: Have you repeatedly queried such things? And to which legislative bodies? Have you predicted such events? Are you Jesus of aviation by any chance?
You clearly know nothing about aviation and aeronautical engineering!
@Paul Furey: they are , although I would worry that increasingly the ‘business concerns’ take precedence over passenger safety – there was a time when if an engine exploded and somebody died on a passenger plane that they would gourd that particular type of plane until the got a better understanding of the risks out there , the entire southwest fleet uses the same engine and the sheer scale of business for them and indeed the wider industry means that nobody is gonna say – hey we dont actually understand what happened and we need to ground these engines / airplane worldwide until we figure out they are safe . Thats a worry because for example you can imagine the uproar if they grounded all Ryanair flights tomorrow because of this ??? Yet literally millions are getting on the same planes / engine types – which they announced was tested SUNDAY with NO ISSUES ???? .HMMMM…..
@Dave Hammond: …..’ground’ the particular plane ….
Horrible way to go. One min you are sitting in your seat drinking a tiny, expensive can of coke.
Then suddenly you are hanging out the window in a 1000km/h wind as the pilot starts to point towards the ground to get at a lower altitude as quick as they can.
One wonders how an engine blowout precipitated a window blowout? Perhaps metal shrapnel from the engine damaged the window. Either way God rest the unlucky lady.
@saoirse janneau: No perhaps. That’s exactly what happened.
@Paul Furey: A fan blade came detached and destroyed the inlet cowl, the inlet cowl then hit the window
Im sitting at the front from now on
@Bill: statistically speaking the rearmost rows are the safest!
Metal fatigue is extremely alarming if the engine is of the age reported.
@Michael Lang:
Which Aircraft Engineering qualification do you have again Tony?
No doubt the Journal’s crack team of aviation ‘experts’ will be giving us a full forensic rundown on the causes of this tragedy.
@ted hagan: ha ha for sure , mind you I still think it should be a concern that response from the authorities and airlines can be as meek after a tragedy especially when they don’t know the risks , if they tested the engine Sunday and it passed all tests there is something very wrong , it should not be good enough to say as a precaution we are going to test our engines – just because the level of business is so big these days , that pane could easily have crashed after that killing all on board ? would that have caused a different outcome to how the risks are managed ? Are these engines a potential death risk ?? We rightly had a massive backlash when car companies were cheating on pollution of diesel engines ?? Yet an airplane engine explodes and kills somebody and nobody calls for a grounding of these engines until the risks and actual cause can be assessed ?? Not right.
No report of the damage on the ground where the fallen debris landed? Hope nobody got injured.
Another former navy pilot lands a crippled aircraft, remember Sullenberger in the Hudson river,
It’s obvious. This plane is 18 years old and it’s engines are disintegrating due to metal fatigue. An 18 year old car would long be in the scrap yard and not on the road. Also, it may surprise some people but second hand engine parts are used on planes to carry out repairs whenever possible to reduce costs. This disaster by the way was described by the airline as, wait for it, an’ operational event ‘ !!!
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