Southwest cancels flights over engine concerns after fatality
Former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Transportation Oliver McGee on Southwest Airlines canceling flights due to engine inspections.
The pilots of the Southwest Airlines jet that suffered a midair engine explosion had to use hand signals to communicate because of the deafening roar, they said in a new interview.
The explosion, which happened near Philadelphia on a Dallas-bound flight from LaGuardia Airport, led to part of the engine shattering a window and a passenger being partially sucked out of the plane. Jennifer Riordan, 43, a Wells Fargo banking executive from New Mexico, later died.
Co-pilot Darren Ellisor recalled a chaotic scene where everything suddenly went wrong.
“We were passing through about 32,000 feet when we heard a large bang and a rapid decompression,” Ellisor says in the ABC “20/20” clip. “The aircraft yawed and banked to the left a little over 40 degrees and we had a very severe vibration from the number one engine. There was shaking, everything. And that all kinda happened all at once.”