Death on Southwest flight 1st accidental domestic airline fatality since 2009
One person died Tuesday after a Southwest Airlines plane had engine failure and was forced to make an emergency landing in Philadelphia.
The National Transportation Safety Board said this is the first accidental domestic airline fatality in nine years; in 2009, Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashed near Buffalo, killing 49 people on board and one person on the ground. The Southwest plane was en route from New York City to Dallas with 144 passengers and five crew members when the engine failed midair. Passenger Matt Tranchin told ABC News he heard a "huge explosion and glass shattering three rows ahead of me," and passenger Cassie Adams said a woman was "sucked out" of a broken window.
Two male passengers were able to pull her back in and then performed CPR, Adams said, with one blocking the window to protect the other passengers. Adams thought "the plane was going down," she added. "It was terrifying. Those men are heroes." Seven people sustained minor injuries, but were not taken to hospitals, officials said. Southwest CEO Gary Kelly called it "a sad day," and commended the flight crew "for their swift action and for safely landing this aircraft." The incident is under investigation.
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Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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