Southwest Airline Flight 1380 Almost Didn’t Make it To PHL Last Year

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Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 sits on the runway after making an emergency landing at the Philadelphia International Airport. Image via David Maialetti, Philadelphia Inquirer.

An emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport was the only option when an engine blew on Southwest Airlines Flight 1380, writes Kyle Arnold for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Nerves of Steel: How I Followed My Dreams, Earned My Wings, and Faced My Greatest Challenge is available on Amazon.com.

“We couldn’t see, we couldn’t breathe, and a piercing pain stabbed our ears, all while the aircraft snapped into a rapid roll and skidded hard to the left as the nose of the aircraft pitched over, initiating a dive toward the ground,” pilot Tammie Jo Shults wrote in her book Nerves of Steel: How I Followed My Dreams, Earned My Wings, and Faced My Greatest Challenge.

Shults was captain of the plane that now stands as the only fatal flight in Southwest’s history.

On April 17, 2018, Flight 1380 was en route to Dallas Love Field from New York. A fan blade on the left engine broke loose.  It tore the engine apart and the debris shattered a window.

Passenger Jennifer Riordan was nearly sucked out of the plane and died later from her injuries.

Luckily, the distance between the explosion and Philadelphia Airport was just the right distance for a landing there, otherwise the plane could have plunged into a New Jersey or Pennsylvania field.

Read more about that fateful flight and about Shults’ life here.

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