Passengers on Southwest flight 1380 are praising the pilot after an emergency landing Tuesday.
Investigators now believe a fan blade on the engine may have broken and led to engine failure.
Air Traffic Control recordings offer a glimpse into the cockpit as pilot Tammie Jo Shults, a former Navy fighter pilot, calmly communicated what was happening.
“Having had past military experience – that is a high level of discipline – in both self-discipline and, of course, operational discipline,” said 9NEWS aviation expert Greg Feith. “So she is true to what her training taught her, not only as a Navy pilot but in taking that same kind of self-disciple and operational skill into a cockpit of a civilian airline.”
Landing the plane would require a team effort, Feith added, including assistance from the first officer, air traffic control, and the flight attendants.
Federal investigators are now trying to figure out what happened. Feith said they will try to determine why the fan blade failed.
“They’ll be looking at a number of things, looking for the origin of that crack, what caused it, then to go back and look at what kind of inspection processes were in place and could those inspections have detected this type of cracking,” he said.
Pieces of the engine blew out a window of the plane, causing one passenger to be partially sucked out through the window. Fellow passengers pulled her back inside, but she later died from her injuries.
“At 32,000 feet, the outside atmosphere is a lot lower in pressure than the inside of the air cabin. So when the window blew out, it’s trying to equalize,” Feith explained. “It’s literally created a bit of a vacuum and sucked paper, and dust, and everything that’s loose—including people that are right there in the immediate vicinity.”
Feith emphasized how rare the incident Tuesday was.
“Airplanes today, commercial aircraft today, are built at the highest level of international standards," he said. "When it comes to construction and design, as well the engines, are built to very high standards.
“These are rare events. It’s a sad - it’s a tragic event. But there are going to be lessons learned, there are there are going to be improvements made.”
