After the left engine was ripped off of a Southwest Flight 1380 traveling from New York City to Dallas, breaking a window and nearly sucking a woman out of the plane, one brave pilot was able to make an emergency landing in Philadelphia. While people on board wrote on social media that they feared that they would soon be facing the end, the pilot’s actions helped ensure the safety of all but one of the 143 passengers. While Southwest Airlines has not named the pilot involved, her name was given as Tammie Jo Shults by survivors of the flight.
What happened?
According to CNN, one of the passengers, Kristopher Johnson, gave the first-hand account of the incident:
“We were leaving LaGuardia heading to Dallas. We were west of Philadelphia probably about 30,000 feet, and all of a sudden we just heard this loud bang, rattling and then it felt like one of the engines went out. The oxygen masks dropped and flight attendants did a good job. The pilot came on and said we’re diverting to Philadelphia and, you know, there was a serious medical injury. I don’t know much about that, but I was sitting in the front. With a couple passengers. We just got the mask on and as soon as we landed, we were thankful. The pilots did a great job, the crew did a great job.”
“They got us down to Philly, and that’s when I took the photo of the engine, and it appeared that it just shredded the left side engine completely. So we were coming down — we dropped probably from 30,000 feet to 25,000 feet, and then the pilot kind of regained control and brought it down safely to Philadelphia. So we got off the plane and onto buses and we’re trying to head over to the tarmac in Philly…It was pretty scary, but the pilots did a great job.”
On Facebook, another passenger, Marty Martinez, said while on video that another passenger was suffering from a heart attack while on board:
“Someone on the plane had a heart attack and it looks like an engine blew out then a window was blown open. We are still on the plane and they are trying to revive a woman on the plane.”
According to NBC 10, it was confirmed that debris broken off from the engine managed to hit and break a window on the plane, with the window’s implosion almost sucking a woman onboard off of the plane. It had also been confirmed that there was at least one fatality from the flight, although the person’s official cause of death was not confirmed; there had been speculation that the person who endured the heart attack had been the one who lost their life but this was also unconfirmed.
At this time, the cause of the engine failure is also believed to be under investigation.
Who is Tammie Jo Shults?
One Instagram user, identified as Amanda Bourman, identified the pilot as “Tammy Jo” during a description of what happened:
“Our engine that blew out at 38000 ft. A window blew out, a man saved us all as he jumped to cover the window. Unfortunately we lost a passenger to a heart attack. The pilot, Tammy Jo was so amazing! She landed us safely in Philly. God sent his angels to watch over us. I actually heard someone say, there is a God!! #southwest #flight1380 #godsenthisangels #anotherdayofgrace”
Shults is a native of New Mexico, having graduated in 1983 from MidAmerican Nazarene University; a Facebook post dating back to March 2017, when she attended a luncheon on campus, listed her as being “one of the first female fighter pilots for the US Navy,” adding that she currently lives in Fair Oaks Ranch, Texas, with her husband, Dean.
According to City-Data, Dean is also a licensed pilot. Together, the two have two children, Sydney and Marshall. In addition to her work as a pilot, Tammie Jo and Dean also ran a company called Girl Pilot Stuff, incorporated in 2004.
