ACCIDENT Update: Deadly SWA 737 Engine, Window Blow-out.

VamoSetbacks: Incidents and Accidents (Premise):

Southwest Airlines flight 1380, from New York’s LaGuardia, bound for Dallas, suffered a left engine explosion Tuesday afternoon as the Boeing 737 neared Philadelphia. Shrapnel (metal fatigued fan blade and defective engine cowling) from the GE-Sanfran engine blast damaged a wing, then knocked out a mid-cabin window, sucking a female passenger out through the hole, exposing her upper body and arms to the elements at over 30, 000 feet for several minutes. 

Nearby passengers quickly pulled the woman back inside, while others struggled to plug the hole with blankets and clothing. Other passengers were screaming through deployed oxygen masks, while crying flight attendants prepared them for either an emergency landing, if not the catastrophic worst.

The crew steadily stabilized the damaged craft, however, after it had descended rapidly from some 31,684 feet to 10,000 feet in less than five minutes—ultimately landing safely in Philadelphia.

Though  a nurse administered CPR to the injured woman onboard, the 43 year-old Wells Fargo Bank VP from and mother of two from New Mexico died from an apparent heart attack.

Preliminarily, SWA officials said the plane had no record of prior mechanical problems or emergency incidents, and that this was the airline’s first fatality due to an inflight incident.

More to come…

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