PHILADELPHIA -- A Southwest Airlines jet apparently blew an engine and got hit by shrapnel that smashed a window and damaged the fuselage Tuesday. Southwest Flight 1380 was flying at about 30,000 feet when the explosion took place. The incident killed one passenger and injured seven others, authorities said. The plane, a Boeing 737 bound from New York to Dallas with 149 people aboard, made an emergency landing in Philadelphia just before noon as passengers breathing through oxygen masks that dropped from the ceiling prayed and braced for impact.
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chairman Robert Sumwalt said one person was killed. It was the first passenger fatality in a U.S. airline accident since 2009, Sumwalt said.
CBS News has learned that the deceased has been identified as Jennifer Riordan, a married mother of two. She worked as a Wells Fargo employee from New Mexico.
Passenger Marty Martinez joined CBSN on the phone from the plane that a woman was injured and was taken off 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 while a passenger was trying to plug the hole in the window with no success.
"I just remember holding my husband's hand, and we just prayed and prayed and prayed," said passenger Amanda Bourman, of New York. "And the thoughts that were going through my head of course were about my daughters, just wanting to see them again and give them a big hug so they wouldn't grow up without parents."
Seven other people were treated for minor injuries, Philadelphia Fire Commissioner 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 under control.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane landed after the crew reported damage to one of the engines, along with 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's "very concerned" about metal fatigue in the jet engines of the flight in question and that NTSB will focus on a missing engine fan blade. He also mentioned that somebody had found a part from the jet 70 miles north of the Philadelphia International Airport.
Southwest CEO Cary C. Kelly told Sumwalt late Tuesday that the airline will begin enhanced inspection procedures of its fleet very soon.
The flight was powered by CFM engines. An official told CBS News that CFM has sent representatives to the scene to support the investigation.
Marty Martinez
Bourman said she was seated near the back and was asleep when she heard a loud noise and oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling. She said the plane was fairly quiet because everyone was wearing a mask, while some passengers were in tears and others shouted words of encouragement.
"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.'"
Martinez did a brief Facebook Live posting while wearing an oxygen mask. He posted, "Something is wrong with our plane! It appears we are going down! Emergency landing!! Southwest flight from NYC to Dallas!!"
"I had WiFi, and I knew I couldn't get any sort of text messages through, so I jumped on Facebook Live," Martinez told CBSN. "I thought I was cataloging the last moments of my existence the whole way ... It was absolutely terrifying."
He said smoke came into 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 are jumping in my live feed and I'm like 'the plane's going down' and I'm just thinking that at any moment now my internet could cut out and that would be that's it."
After the plane landed, he posted photos of a damaged window near the engine.
Flight 1380 From NYC to Dallas crash landed in Philly. Engine exploded in the air and blew open window 3 seats away from... Posted by Marty Martinez on Tuesday, April 17, 2018
Bourman said that everyone started yelling to brace for impact when the plane started to land. Everyone clapped and praised the pilot after he set the aircraft down.
Bourman said she saw emergency medical workers using a defibrillator to help a woman who was taken off the plane. Bourman said she also saw a man in a cowboy hat rush to cover the broken window and that the man had a bandage around his arm after the plane landed.
Passengers did "some pretty amazing things under some pretty difficult circumstances," Thiel said.
Tracking data from FlightAware.com shows Flight 1380 was heading west over New York's southern tier at about 32,200 feet traveling 500 mph when it abruptly turned toward Philadelphia.
It was the first death stemming from an in-flight accident on a U.S. airliner since 2009, when 49 people on board and one of the ground were killed in the crash of a Continental Express plane near Buffalo, New York.
CBS Philadelphia
Southwest has about 700 planes, all of them 737s, including more than 500 737-700s like the one involved in Tuesday's emergency landing. It is the world's largest operator of the 737. The Boeing 737 is the best-selling jetliner in the world 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 will look at maintenance records for the engine.
"There's a ring around the engine that's meant to contain the engine pieces when this happens," Goglia said. "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?"
Goglia said the Boeing 737 is a safe plane but engine failures occur from time to time.
"We're 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."
CBS Philadelphia
The engine failure was reminiscent of a similar event on a Southwest Boeing 737-700 jet in August 2016 as it flew from New Orleans to Orlando, Florida. Shrapnel from the engine left a 5-by-16-inch hole just above the wing. Passenger oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling. Pilots landed the plane safely in Pensacola, Florida.
NTSB investigators said one of the engine's fan blades broke off from the hub during the flight. The broken edge of the blade showed crack lines consistent with metal fatigue.
Before Tuesday, Southwest had never had an accident-related fatality of a passenger, 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's car.
NEW YORK, KOMPAS.com - Seorang perempuan tewas ketika sebuah pesawat jurusan New York ke Dallas, Amerika Serikat ( AS) mengalami masalah mesin di tengah penerbangan.
Diwartakan Sky News Rabu (18/4/2018), mesin sebelah kiri pesawat Boeing 737 milik maskapai Southwest Airlines meledak pada ketinggian 32.000 kaki Selasa (17/4/2018).
Pecahan mesin itu menghantam jendela di tempat Jennifer Riordan duduk yang ketika itu, tengah berada dalam perjalanan pulang sesuai melakukan urusan bisnis di New York.
Kaca yang pecah membuat Riordan hampir terlontar keluar. Beruntung, saat itu seorang penumpang pria langsung menggenggam tangannya, dan berusaha menariknya ke dalam.
Penumpang yang bernama Alfred Tumlinson mengatakan, penumpang tersebut tidak bisa melakukannya sendirian. Jadi, dia dibantu seorang penumpang lain.
Baca juga : Southwest Airlines Mendarat Darurat akibat Kerusakan Mesin
Usaha mereka berdua berhasil. Riordan berhasil ditarik ke dalam, dan lubang tempatnya hampir tersedot keluar langsung ditutup.
Sayangnya, meski sudah dilakukan pertolongan pertama, Riordan yang berprofesi sebagai wakil presiden sebuah bank itu meninggal karena menderita dari luka-lukanya.
Gubernur New Mexico, Susana Martinez, menyampaikan bela sungkawa, dan berkata Riordan merupakan sosok yang sangat dikenal di negara bagian tersebut.
"Dia adalah perempuan luar biasa yang mementingkan keluarga serta lingkungannya. Kehilangannya bakal terasa di seluruh New Mexico," kata Martinez dikutip AP via Stuff.
Selain korban tewas, insiden tersebut juga membuat tujuh penumpang lain mengalami luka-luka meski tidak membahayakan hidup mereka.
Pesawat yang membawa 143 penumpang dan lima awak kabin tersebut berhasil mendarat dengan selamat di Bandara Internasional Philadelphia.
Para penumpang memuji Tammie Jo Shults yang tetap tenang meski berada dalam situasi genting. "Dia mempunyai saraf baja. Dia luar biasa," kata Tomlinson.
"Kami beruntung punya pilot yang cakap seperti dia. Pesawat begitu stabil saat insiden itu terjadi," puji penumpang lainnya, Eric Zilbert.
Dalam keterangan resminya, Southwest menyatakan ketika dilakukan pemeriksaan Minggu (15/4/2018), tidak ditemukan masalah pada mesin maupun pesawatnya.
"Saat ini, kami tengah dalam proses untuk menggali lebih banyak informasi. Keselamatan merupakan prioritas utama kami," ujar Southwest di Twitter.
Riordan merupakan penumpang pertama yang tewas dalam kecelakaan yang melibatkan maskapai AS sejak 2009.
Saat itu, maskapai Continental Express jatuh menerpa sebuah rumah di Buffalo, dekat New York, dan menewaskan 50 orang, baik di dalam pesawat maupun di darat.
Baca juga : Karyawan Maskapai Southwest Tewas Tertembak, Bandara di Oklahoma Ditutup
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Jennifer Riordan died after being partially sucked out of window
A woman who was partially sucked out of a window of a US passenger plane after an engine exploded in mid-air has died.
Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 made an emergency landing in Philadelphia after a window, wings and fuselage were damaged. Seven passengers were injured.
Initial findings say an engine fan blade was missing. In a recording, one of the pilots can be heard saying "there is a hole and someone went out".
The last passenger death on a US commercial flight was in 2009.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Video shows exploded plane engine
The Boeing 737-700 had been en route from New York's La Guardia airport to Dallas, Texas, with 143 passengers and five crew when the incident happened.
Witnesses say an engine on the plane's left side blew, smashing a window and causing cabin depressurisation that nearly sucked the woman out of the aircraft.
She was pulled back in by other passengers.
Image copyright United Way of Central New Mexico Image caption Jennifer Riordan was a mother-of-two and bank vice-president
The plane made a safe landing at 11:20 (15:20 GMT), fire officials said.
The dead woman was Jennifer Riordan, a mother-of-two and bank vice-president at Wells Fargo in Albuquerque, New Mexico, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
In the air traffic control recording released by NBC News, pilot Tammie Jo Shults is heard saying: "We have a part of the aircraft missing, so we're going to need to slow down a bit."
Asked if the plane is on fire, she says it is not but adds: "They said there is a hole and someone went out."
Image copyright Twitter/ @mtranchin Image caption Passenger images shows a broken window and oxygen masks deployed
The former Navy pilot was at the controls when the plane landed.
The US Federal Aviation Administration has opened an investigation.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said a preliminary investigation had revealed that an engine fan blade was missing and there was evidence of metal fatigue at the point where it had apparently broken off.
NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said part of the cowling - the engine's covering - was found in Bernville, Pennsylvania, about 70 miles (112km) from Philadelphia.
"It is very unusual so we are taking this event extremely seriously," he said, adding that the investigation could take 12 to 15 months.
Mr Sumwalt told reporters the type of engine, a CFM56, is "very widely used in commercial transport".
Southwest Airlines said it was accelerating its inspection programme for CFM56 engines "out of an abundance of caution" and said inspections should be completed over the next 30 days.
In a statement, Southwest said it was "devastated" and extended sympathy to all those affected by the "tragic event".
The Philadelphia Fire Department said one passenger had been taken to hospital in a critical condition while seven other people were treated for minor injuries at the scene.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption NTSB investigators say a fan blade apparently broke off in the engine
Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Adam Thiel told a news conference that passengers and crew "did some pretty amazing things under very difficult circumstances".
First responders "found a fuel leak and small fire in one of the engines", he said, adding that they used foam to extinguish the flames.
'Loud bang'
Images have been shared on social media showing passengers sitting in oxygen masks as the plane shudders around them.
"All of a sudden, we heard this loud bang, rattling..." said one passenger.
"It just shredded the left-side engine completely... it was scary," Kristopher Johnson told CNN.
Timothy Bourman, a pastor from New York City, told the Philadelphia Inquirer he had been sitting in the rear of the plane when he heard a loud boom.
"All the sudden, it felt like we dropped 100 feet," he said.
"We were kind of out of control for a while. It seemed like the pilot was having a hard time controlling the plane. Honestly I think we just all thought we were going down."
When flight attendants told passengers to brace for impact, Mr Bourman said he and his wife worried for the worst.
"We're just all really thankful to be alive right now," he said. "Thankful to God, thankful to that pilot."
Passenger Marty Martinez posted a brief Facebook live with the caption: "Something is wrong with our plane! It appears we are going down! Emergency landing!! Southwest flight from NYC to Dallas!!"
After landing, he told CBS News that it felt like the plane was "free-falling", and added that he saw one injured woman being taken off the plane by rescuers.
"There was blood everywhere," he said.
"First there was an explosion and then almost immediately the oxygen masks came down and probably within a matter of 10 seconds the engine hit a window and busted it wide open."
