Former navy pilot and committed Christian, Tammie Jo Shults, 56, who piloted Southwest 1380 to safety on Tuesday after part of an engine ripped off, is being hailed as a hero for how calmly and skillfully she landed the plane.
The Daily Wire is reporting on the story of Flight 1380 which took off from LaGuardia Airport in New York City and was about 20 minutes en route to its destination in Dallas when passengers heard a loud boom. This was followed by a window of the plane blowing out, causing an immediate loss in cabin pressure. Oxygen masks dropped down and passengers scrambled to hook themselves up as the plane suddenly plunged 5,000 feet.
Just as the plane leveled off at around 25,000 feet, Shults came on the loudspeaker to calmly inform passengers that they were diverting to Philadelphia.
What few people realized in the midst of the chaos is that Jennifer Riordan, a 43-year-old Wells Fargo bank executive and mother of two from Albuquerque, New Mexico, had been partially sucked out of the broken window.
Two Texans, a rancher named Tim McGinty of Hillsboro and Andrew Needum, a firefighter from Celina, frantically tried to pull the woman back inside the plane.
“It seemed like two minutes and it seemed like two hours,” before they managed to get her inside, McGinty told CBS.
By then, she was no longer breathing. A flight attendant called for anyone who knew CPR and a retired school nurse named Peggy Phillips rushed to the scene where she and Needum began administering CPR for about 20 minutes until the plane landed.
“If you can possibly imagine going through the window of an airplane at about 600 mph and hitting either the fuselage or the wing with your body, with your face, then I think I can probably tell you there was significant trauma,” Phillips said.
Unfortunately, Riordan did not survive. A coroner later confirmed that she died of blunt force trauma to the head, neck and upper torso.
Meanwhile, in the cockpit, Shults was calmly guiding the crippled plane toward Philadelphia International Airport. A recording of the transmission between herself and air traffic control revealed her remarkable calm as she relayed the status of the plane.
“Is your airplane on fire?” the tower asked at one point.
“No, it’s not on fire,” Shults calmly responded, “but part of it’s missing.”
Such was the demeanor of this former Navy pilot, the first woman to fly F-18s, who always wanted to fly but went to college for veterinary medicine because of how difficult it was for women to fly in the military. After she graduated, she applied to the Air Force and was rejected, but the Navy gave her the nod. She became of their first female fighter pilots. Although she wasn’t permitted to fly in combat, she became an “aggressor pilot” and an instructor. She joined Southwest Airlines in 1993.
A committed Christian, she says that piloting planes gives her the opportunity “to witness for Christ on almost every flight.”
Her witness was exceptionally powerful on this day when, after safely landing the plane and its 143 passengers in Philadelphia, she came into the cabin to speak with each one personally.
One passenger named Diana McBride Self wrote on social media: “Tammie Jo Schults, the pilot came back to speak to each of us personally. This is a true American Hero. A huge thank you for her knowledge, guidance and bravery in a traumatic situation. God bless her and all the crew.”
“She has nerves of steel. That lady, I applaud her,” Self’s husband, passenger Alfred Tumlinson, told the Associated Press. “I’m going to send her a Christmas card — I’m going to tell you that — with a gift certificate for getting me on the ground. She was awesome.”
“She’s a formidable woman, as sharp as a tack,” Shults’ brother-in-law, Gary Shults, said. “My brother says she’s the best pilot he knows. She’s a very caring, giving person who takes care of lots of people.”
Those people include her husband, Dean, and two children – and the hundreds of passengers who put their lives in her very capable hands every day.
