An engine on a Southwest Airlines flight with 149 people aboard exploded and broke apart mid-air on Tuesday, 17 April, killing one passenger and nearly sucking another out of a shattered window, according to airline and federal authorities and witness and media accounts.
The plane, a Boeing 737-700 which was bound to Dallas from New York, made an emergency landing in Philadelphia.
There were 144 passengers and five crew members aboard the flight.
The death of 43-year-old Jennifer Riordan on Flight 1380 was the first in a US commercial aviation accident since 2009, according to National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) statistics.
One passenger was taken to a hospital in critical condition and seven people were treated for minor injuries at the scene, Philadelphia Fire Department spokeswoman Kathy Matheson said.
Matheson, however, could not confirm how the passenger in critical condition sustained her injuries.
NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt told an evening news conference at the Philadelphia airport that a preliminary investigation found an engine fan blade missing, having apparently broken off, and that there was metal fatigue at the point where it normally attached.
Sumwalt said part of the engine’s covering, called a cowling, was found in Bernville, Pennsylvania, about 70 miles from the Philadelphia airport.
Calling it an “unusual event”, Sumwalt said:
This should not happen and we want to find out why it happened so that preventative measures can be put in place.NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt reported by Reuters
He said the investigation could take 12 to 15 months to complete.
Flight 1380 took off from New York’s LaGuardia Airport at around 10.27 am and was diverted to Philadelphia just under an hour later, according to flight tracking website FlightAware.com.
Southwest Chief Executive Officer Gary Kelly said the flight landed at Philadelphia International at around 11.20 am.
The engine on the plane’s left side threw off shrapnel when it blew apart, shattering a window and causing rapid cabin depressurization that nearly pulled a female passenger through the hole, according to witness accounts and local news media reports.
“We have a part of the aircraft missing, so we’re going to need to slow down a bit,” the plane’s captain, Tammy Jo Shults, told air traffic controllers in audio from the cockpit released on NBC News.
Asked by a controller if the jet was on fire, Shults said it was not, but added, “They said there is a hole and someone went out.”
“A woman was partially drawn out of the plane and pulled back in by other passengers,” Todd Bauer, whose daughter was on the flight, told the NBC affiliate in Philadelphia.
At 11.18 am, passenger Marty Martinez posted on Facebook a live video of himself on the plane, wearing a breathing mask, as the plane descended.
More than an hour later, at 12.27 pm, Martinez posted pictures of a blown-out window and the badly damaged engine.
Martinez said objects flew out of the hole where the window had exploded, and “passengers right next to her were holding onto (the woman being pulled out). And, meanwhile, there was blood all over this man’s hands. He was tending to her.”
Southwest shares fell more than 3 percent after the NTSB reported the fatality, before closing down 1.1 percent at $54.27 on the New York Stock Exchange.
Boeing in a statement extended its condolences to the family of the woman killed, and said it is “providing assistance at the request and under the direction” of the NTSB.
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