Tammie Jo Shults: Southwest Airlines pilot lauded for handling crisis after blown engine

JIM VERTUNO and EMILY SCHMALL, Associated Press

5:28 AM, Apr 19, 2018

5:40 AM, Apr 19, 2018

Local aviation experts weigh in on Southwest incident.

Local passengers and experts weigh in on the engine failure that happened to a Southwest jet.

One person is dead after an engine blew apart on a Southwest Airlines flight Tuesday. It's the first fatality like this on a U.S. airliner since 2009. Southwest flight 1380 was on its way from New York to Dallas when the pilots reported an engine fire and started descending to land in Philadelphia. Passengers said shrapnel from the engine blew out a window on the jet, injuring a woman who was sitting nearby. People on the plane posted pictures and video of oxygen masks that dropped from the ceiling. When the plane was on the ground, an injured woman was taken off the plane. It wasn't clear Tuesday who was killed. Southwest Airlines' CEO released a statement saying the airline was complying with the National Transportation Safety Board's investigation. "This is a sad day," CEO Gary Kelly said. "Our hearts go out to the family and loved ones of the deceased customer. Please join us in offering thoughts and prayers and support to all of those affected by today's tragedy." Additional reporting from Newsy affiliate CNN . Trending stories at Newsy.com Starbucks Is Closing Thousands Of Stores For Racial-Bias Training Sandy Hook Parents Sue InfoWars Host Alex Jones Walkout: The School Funding Rebellion

Investigators say they found a piece of the Southwest Airlines plane that had an engine blow Tuesday 70 miles outside Philadelphia. The National Transportation Safety Board says it found one of the plane's engine cowlings in Bernville, Pennsylvania. That's right near where the pilots first noticed a problem. The NTSB said there was evidence on the plane's engine of metal fatigue where a fan blade separated from the jet. One of the pilots initially told air traffic controllers there was a fire in the engine before later clarifying. "Southwest 1380 has an engine fire — descending," one of the pilots said. Later, she told ATC, "No fire now, but we are single engine." "There are fire wires that when they are — it's possible and even likely that once this fan blade separated, it activated an engine fire warning in the cockpit. But whether or not there was an actual fire with the engine, I do not believe there was an actual fire," NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said Tuesday. One of the pilots was getting praise from passengers Tuesday night for how she handled the emergency landing. When the engine failed, debris hit a window on the jet, breaking it. The woman sitting next to it was pulled partially out of the plane, according to other passengers. She later died. The airline said Tuesday it was cooperating with the NTSB's investigation. Additional reporting from Newsy affiliate CNN . Trending stories at Newsy.com The Inventor Of Bump Stocks Will Soon Stop Taking Orders IRS Extends Tax Deadline After Page Outage NTSB Launches Probe Into Deadly Southwest Airlines Engine Failure

BOERNE, Texas (AP) - The Southwest Airlines pilot being lauded as a hero in a harrowing emergency landing after a passenger was partially blown out of the jet's damaged fuselage is also being hailed for her pioneering role in a career where she has been one of the few women at the controls.

Tammie Jo Shults, one of the first female fighter pilots in the U.S. Navy, was the captain and piloting the Dallas-bound Flight 1380 when it made an emergency landing Tuesday in Philadelphia, according to her husband, Dean Shults.

One of the engines on the Boeing 737 exploded while the plane was traveling 500 mph (800 kph) at 30,000 feet (9144 m) with 149 people on board. Shrapnel hit the plane and passengers said they had to rescue a woman who was being blown out of a damaged window. The woman later died of blunt force trauma to her head, neck and torso.

Shults calmly relayed details about the crisis to air traffic controllers, and passengers commended her handling of the situation.

In a statement late Wednesday, Shults and First Officer Darren Ellisor said they felt like they were simply doing their jobs.

"On behalf of the entire Crew, we appreciate the outpouring of support from the public and our coworkers as we all reflect on one family's profound loss," the two pilots said in the statement, adding that their "hearts are heavy."

Friends at Shults' church in Boerne, Texas, about 30 miles northwest of San Antonio, said Wednesday they were not surprised after listening to the recording and reading media reports about her actions.

"Everybody is talking about Tammie Jo and how cool and calm she was in a crisis, and that's just Tammie Jo," Rachel Russo said. "That's how she's wired."

Shults was commissioned into the Navy in 1985 and reached the rank of lieutenant commander, said Commander Ron Flanders, the spokesman for Naval Air Forces in San Diego.

Women aviators were excluded from combat missions until the month after Shults got off active duty in March 1993, but Flanders said Shults flew during Operation Desert Storm trainings as an aggressor enemy pilot.

"While we at that time had an exclusion, she was in fact helping male pilots hone their skills," Flanders said.

Veteran Navy combat aviator Linda Maloney said that she and Shults were among a small group of women who worked to see the combat exclusion rule repealed.

"Obviously it was frustrating," said Maloney, who became among the first women to join a combat military flying squadron and was deployed to the Arabian Gulf. "We go through the same training that the guys do, and our hope was the Navy would allow us to fly in combat at some point."

Shults was featured in Maloney's book "Military Fly Moms" along with the stories and photos of 69 other women U.S. military veterans.

Russo and Staci Thompson, who has known Shults for about 20 years and was nanny to her two children when they were small, said she "loved" her military career but has alluded to frustrations and challenges that came with it.

They also said she embraced those experiences to make her stronger and guide her into a role as a mentor to young female pilots or girls thinking about a military career.

"She learned a lot about overcoming things as a woman in a male-dominated field," Russo said.

Shults is from New Mexico, according to a personnel file from the Navy, and was a 1983 graduate of MidAmerica Nazarene University in Olathe, Kansas, where she earned degrees in biology and agribusiness.

Shults' brother-in-law, Gary Shults, said her husband also is a Southwest pilot and told him she made the emergency landing.

"She's a formidable woman, as sharp as a tack," said Gary Shults, a dentist in San Antonio. "My brother says she's the best pilot he knows."

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Schmall reported from Fort Worth, Texas. Associated Press writers Adam Kealoha Causey in Oklahoma City, Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia, and Terry Wallace and business writer David Koening in Dallas contributed to this story.