Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 makes emergency landing in Philadelphia after engine apparently exploded, killing one and injuring more

PHILADELPHIA CREAM – A Southwest Airlines jet apparently blew up an engine and was struck by shrapnel that smashed a window and damaged the fuselage on Tuesday. Southwest Flight 1380 was flying at approximately 30,000 feet when the explosion occurred. The incident killed a passenger and injured seven others, authorities said. The plane, a Boeing 737 bound for New York to Dallas with 149 people on board, made an emergency landing in Philadelphia just before noon as passengers breathing through oxygen masks that fell from the ceiling prayed and stood. were preparing for impact.

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chairman Robert Sumwalt said one person was killed. This is the first passenger death in a U.S. plane crash since 2009, Sumwalt said.

CBS News has learned that the deceased was identified as Jennifer Riordan, a married mother of two children. She worked as an employee of Wells Fargo in New Mexico.

Passenger Marty Martinez joined CBSN on the phone from the plane that a woman was injured and was removed from the plane.

“There was blood everywhere,” Martinez told CBSN’s Anne-Marie Green, adding that people on the plane rushed to help the injured woman as a passenger tried to plug the hole in the window without success.

“I just remember holding my husband’s hand, and we just prayed and prayed and prayed,” said passenger Amanda Bourman from New York. “And the thoughts going through my head were of course about my daughters, I just wanted to see them again and give them a big hug so they don’t grow up without parents.”

Seven other people were treated for minor injuries, Philadelphia Fire Marshal Adam Thiel said. He said there was a fuel leak in one of the engines when firefighters arrived and a small fire was quickly brought out.

The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane landed after the crew reported damage to one of the engines, as well as to the fuselage and at least one window. The NTSB sent a team of investigators to Philadelphia.

At a Tuesday night press conference, NTSB’s Sumwalt said he was “very concerned” about metal fatigue in the jet engines on the flight in question and that the NTSB would focus on an engine fan vane. missing. He also mentioned that someone found part of the jet 70 miles north of the Philadelphia International Airport.

Southwest CEO Cary C. Kelly told Sumwalt on Tuesday evening that the airline will begin enhanced inspection procedures for its fleet very soon.

The flight was powered by CFM engines. An official told CBS News that CFM had sent representatives to the scene to support the investigation.

Bourman said she was sitting by the backrest and asleep when she heard a loud noise and oxygen masks fell from the ceiling. She said the plane was fairly quiet as everyone was wearing a mask, while some passengers were in tears and others shouted words of encouragement.

“Everyone was crying and upset,” she said. “You had a few passengers who were really loud and they kept yelling at people, you know, ‘It’s okay, we’re going to do this.'”

Martinez made a brief post on Facebook Live while wearing an oxygen mask. He posted: “Something’s wrong with our plane! Looks like we’re going to fall! Emergency landing !! Southwest flight from New York to Dallas !!”

“I had WiFi and knew I couldn’t receive text messages, so I hopped on Facebook Live,” Martinez told CBSN. “I thought I was cataloging the last moments of my existence along the way… It was absolutely terrifying.”

He said smoke entered the plane through the window and it was difficult to breathe through the oxygen mask.

“It was the most terrifying experience” Martinez told CBSN. “I mean, to think that as I’m going down and people jumping into my live stream and I’m like ‘the plane is going down’ and I just think at any point my internet might go down. cut and that would be that’s it. “

After the plane landed, he posted photos of a damaged window near the engine.

Bourman said everyone started screaming in preparation for impact when the plane started to land. Everyone applauded and congratulated the pilot after landing the plane.

Bourman said he saw rescuers use a defibrillator to help a woman who had been taken off the plane. Bourman said she also saw a man wearing a cowboy hat rushing to cover the broken window and the man had a bandage around his arm after the plane landed.

The passengers did “some pretty amazing things under some pretty difficult circumstances,” Thiel said.

Tracking data from FlightAware.com shows Flight 1380 was heading west above the southern level of New York at about 32,200 feet, traveling at 500 mph when it suddenly turned towards Philadelphia.

It was the first fatality in an in-flight accident on a U.S. airliner since 2009, when 49 people on board and one on the ground were killed in a Continental Express plane crash near Buffalo, New York.

Southwest has around 700 planes, all 737s, including more than 500 737-700s like the one involved in Tuesday’s emergency landing. It is the world’s largest operator of 737. The Boeing 737 is the world’s best-selling airliner and has a good safety record.

John Goglia, a former NTSB member, said investigators will take the Southwest engine apart to understand what happened and review engine maintenance records.

“There is a ring around the engine that’s supposed to contain engine parts when this happens,” Goglia said. “In this case, it isn’t. This is going to be a focal point for the NTSB – why hasn’t (the ring) done its job?”

Goglia said the Boeing 737 is a safe aircraft, but engine failures do occur from time to time.

“We are pushing the engines to produce as much power as possible,” he said. “We’re right on the edge. Sometimes they fail, and that’s why the containment ring is there.”

The engine failure was reminiscent of a similar occurrence on a Southwest Boeing 737-700 in August 2016 as it flew from New Orleans to Orlando, Florida. The shrapnel from the engine left a 5 x 16 inch hole just above the wing. The passengers’ oxygen masks fell from the ceiling. The pilots landed the aircraft safely in Pensacola, Florida.

NTSB investigators said one of the engine fan blades came off the hub during the flight. The broken edge of the blade showed crack lines consistent with metal fatigue.

Prior to Tuesday, Southwest had never had a passenger crash-related fatality, although a young boy died in 2006 when a Southwest jet skidded off a runway at Chicago’s Midway Airport, crashed through a fence and collided with the boy’s family car.