Airbus A380

Airbus A380 dropped 100L plus of hydraulic fluid after a 5000psi line split.

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For Survivors of Southwest Engine Explosion, What Comes Next?

Being on an airplane more than six miles in the air when an engine blows up and sends shrapnel through a window is an experience so scary that aviation lawyers say it’s not just the family of the woman killed on a Southwest Airlines Co. flight this week who could have a case.

“All of the passengers here, and the crew, will likely have claims,” said Robert Clifford, founder of Chicago-based Clifford Law Offices, who’s been involved in every domestic commercial aviation disaster since the 1970s. “Even if these people were not physically injured,” he said, “many, many of them will experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder”

The people who were sending “videos to their families, saying, ‘These are my last words to you,’ which is something that did occur in this incident, that kind of person will live with that for the rest of their life,” he said. The plane was carrying 149 people, including 5 crew.

Days after a jet engine exploded about 32,500 feet over Pennsylvania 20 minutes into a flight, federal and corporate inspectors are examining what happened. The National Transportation Safety Board said it will take at least a year to pinpoint what caused the engine failure that led to the first fatality on a U.S.-registered airline in more than nine years.

Immediate Needs

In the meantime, several experts with knowledge of commercial airline disasters said that Southwest will likely lead the charge to work with passengers and their families.

In cases of serious injury or death, an airline will usually advance funds to help passengers with immediate needs. George Hamlin, a transportation consultant based in Fairfax, Va., who has worked with airlines and commercial aviation suppliers, said that although he’s not sure “non-physical injury” would be covered under that scenario, Southwest’s reputation suggests the company will go to some lengths to appease people who were on the flight.

Still, that may not preclude litigation down the road, though the precedent for liability based on emotional trauma or non-serious injuries is ambiguous.

Clifford is particularly attuned to what forced Flight 1380 to abort its route to Dallas and land instead in Philadelphia. He was lead counsel for survivors of a DC-10 that crashed in Sioux City, Iowa, in July 1989. One hundred twelve people died and 184 survived.

“Uncontained engine failures, in which parts of the engine burst through the protective casing called a cowling, have a special history for me in my work,” he said.

Engine Components

Technical experts from Boeing Co., which makes the 737 jetliner involved in the incident, and engine maker CFM International, a venture of General Electric Co. and France’s Safran SA, are gathering clues about what caused the accident.

Southwest workers, Clifford said, cannot sue their employer. They would, however, have standing to sue General Electric or the manufacturer of any faulty component of the engine. GE, Boeing and Southwest will probably pool funding for settlements and sort out reimbursements later, according to Clifford.

Every commercial plane in the sky is insured for anywhere from $1.85 billion to $2.1 billion. Each company involved has its own insurance coverage, he said.

“All of those insurance interests have already gotten together,” Clifford said, “and somebody’s on point for dealing with these cases.”

A spokesman for Boeing declined to comment. Representatives of Southwest and General Electric didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours.

Early Shock

At Wisner Law Firm in Geneva, Illinois, clients who are parties in litigation related to an American Airlines Group Inc. engine that exploded on a Chicago runway in 2016 have been calling to ask how Tuesday’s incident might affect their case, according to Alexandra Wisner, a partner at the firm.

The clients are saying, “‘That’s exactly what we were afraid would happen, that this would happen in-flight, and that’s why we were all so fearful of our lives,”’ she said.

People are typically still in shock during the first few days after such an event, Wisner said. Sometimes, they’re not aware that they could have a claim. “They think, ‘Well, I didn’t have some kind of big injury,”’ she said, so they don’t realize that any remedy is available.

Under domestic law, Wisner said, “there is an argument that there is a contemporaneous injury here, a physical one. It can range from things like the inhalation of smoke, to having turbulence -- being jerked around in the plane. Depending on how exactly the evacuation went, if people were being knocked into each other -- it really depends on the facts of the case.”

Wisner has represented passengers in a number of incidents that have included in-flight turbulence or an emergency evacuation. Southwest, she said, might already be reaching out to passengers, asking if they’re all right and whether they needed any sort of treatment.

On international flights, the Montreal Convention governs liability, so any passengers who were on one leg of an international trip would be covered by those standards. But with international tickets, “fright alone” hasn’t traditionally been a recoverable claim, according to one experienced aviation lawyer who asked not to be identified because of potential involvement in future litigation.

If you have an airline that dropped 30,000 feet and all the engines went off, you couldn’t recover for the fright unless you were physically injured, he said.

There are examples of what not to do, according to Wisner. In the days after the American Airlines incident on the Chicago tarmac, she said American offered her clients frequent-flier points and vouchers.

‘Nerves of steel’

She calmly landed the Southwest flight, just as you’d expect of a former fighter pilot

The pilot’s voice was calm yet focused as her plane descended with 149 people on board.

“Southwest 1380, we’re single engine,” said Capt. Tammie Jo Shults, a former fighter pilot with the U.S. Navy. “We have part of the aircraft missing, so we’re going to need to slow down a bit.” She asked for medical personnel to meet her aircraft on the runway. “We’ve got injured passengers.”

“Injured passengers, okay, and is your airplane physically on fire?” asked a male voice on the other end, according to an air traffic recording.

“No, it’s not on fire, but part of it’s missing,” Shults said, pausing for a moment. “They said there’s a hole, and uh, someone went out.”

The engine on Shults’s plane had, in fact, exploded on Tuesday, spraying shrapnel into the aircraft, causing a window to be blown out and leaving one woman dead and seven other people injured. Passengers pulled the woman who later died back into the plane as she was being sucked out. Others on board the Dallas-bound flight braced for impact as oxygen masks muffled their screams.

In the midst of the chaos, Shults successfully completed an emergency landing at the Philadelphia International Airport, sparing the lives of 148 people aboard the Boeing 737-700 and averting a far worse catastrophe.

“She has nerves of steel,” one passenger, Alfred Tumlinson, told the Associated Press. “That lady, I applaud her. 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.”

Another passenger, Diana McBride Self, thanked Shults on Facebook for her “guidance and bravery in a traumatic situation.” She added that Shults “came back to speak to each of us personally.”

“This is a true American Hero,” McBride wrote. Others on social media agreed and compared Shults with Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who guided his US Airways plane to safety in New York’s Hudson River in 2009.

Southwest declined to name the pilot, though passengers confirmed Shults’s name on social media, and Shults’s mother-in-law told The Washington Post she was the pilot. Shults’s husband also confirmed her name to the Associated Press. Shults declined to comment when reached by The Post.

Her mother-in-law, Virginia Shults, told The Post that as soon as she heard the pilot’s voice on the radio transmission online, she said, “That is Tammie Jo.”

“It was just as if she and I were sitting here talking,” Virginia Shults said. “She’s a very calming person.”

The passenger killed was identified as Jennifer Riordan, of Albuquerque, by her employer Wells Fargo. Riordan was an Albuquerque-based community relations leader “who was loved and respected,” Wells Fargo said in a statement.

“Knowing Tammie Jo, I know her heart is broken for the death of that passenger,” Shults said.

It was also no surprise to her that Tammie Jo Shults was the pilot credited with the skillful landing. Shults’s mother-in-law and friends described her as a pioneer in the aviation field, a woman who broke barriers to pursue her goals.

She was among the first female fighter pilots for the U.S. Navy, according to her alma mater, MidAmerica Nazarene University, from which she graduated in 1983. Cindy Foster, who went to college with her, told the Kansas City Star that Shults was also among the first women to fly an F/A-18 Hornet for the Navy.

“She said she wasn’t going to let anyone tell her she couldn’t,” Foster said.

Shults’s persistence in becoming a pilot goes back to her upbringing on a New Mexico ranch, near Holloman Air Force Base, Shults says in the book “Military Fly Moms,” by Linda Maloney.

“Some people grow up around aviation. I grew up under it,” she said. Watching the daily air show, she knew she “just had to fly.”

She recalled attending a lecture on aviation during her senior year of high school, in 1979. A retired colonel started the class by asking Shults, the only girl in attendance, “if I was lost.”

“I mustered up the courage to assure him I was not and that I was interested in flying,” she wrote. “He allowed me to stay but assured me there were no professional women pilots.”

When she met a woman in college who had received her Air Force wings, she wrote, “I set to work trying to break into the club.”

But Shults, whose maiden name is Bonnell, wrote that the Air Force “wasn’t interested” in talking to her. The Navy let her apply for aviation officer candidate school, “but there did not seem to be a demand for women pilots.”

“Finally,” she wrote, a year after taking the Navy aviation exam, she found a recruiter who would process her application. After aviation officer candidate school in Pensacola, Fla., she was assigned to a training squadron at Naval Air Station Chase Field in Beeville, Tex., as an instructor pilot teaching student aviators how to fly the Navy T-2 trainer. She later left to fly the A-7 Corsair in Lemoore, Calif.

By then, she met her “knight in shining airplane,” a fellow pilot who would become her husband, Dean Shults. (He also now flies for Southwest Airlines.)

Because of the combat exclusion law, Tammie Jo Shults was prohibited from flying in a combat squadron. While her husband was able to join a squadron, her choices were limited, involving providing electronic warfare training to Navy ships and aircraft.

She later became one of the first women to fly what was then the Navy’s newest fighter, the F/A-18 Hornet but, again, in a support role. “Women were new to the Hornet community, and already there were signs of growing pains.”

She served in the Navy for 10 years, reaching the rank of Navy lieutenant commander. She left the Navy in 1993 and now lives in the San Antonio area with her husband. She has two children: a teenage son and a daughter in her early 20s.

Foster, her friend from college, told the Kansas City Star that Shults knew she “had to work harder than everyone else.”

“She did it for herself and all women fighting for a chance,” Foster said.

Shults’s approach to parenting, described in the “Military Fly Moms” book, reflected a similar sentiment.

“We endeavor to teach our children to be leaders, not lemmings,” she said. “This is especially important when it comes to making the right choice while the crowd is pulling in the other direction.”

Gary Shults, her brother-in-law, described her to the AP as a “formidable woman, as sharp as a tack.”

“My brother says she’s the best pilot he knows,” Gary Shults said. “She’s a very caring, giving person who takes care of lots of people.”

Her mother-in-law also described her as a devout Christian, with a faith she thinks may have contributed to her calm state amid the emergency landing.

“I know God was with her, and I know she was talking to God,” Virginia Shults said.

Inside The Compartment Of An Airbus A380 Where Crew Members Can Snooze

Being a good crew member on an airline requires the patience of a saint. They’re expected to handle everything from unruly passengers to screaming children and turbulence with grace. Fortunately, there’s a place they can hide out on the Airbus A380 if they can’t handle it anymore: the hidden crew rest compartment.

It’s worth noting that different airlines outfit their planes differently, so perhaps this compartment looks different on a non-Lufthansa plane. This video comes from one of Lufthansa’s A380s, and shows a compartment that’s off-limits to the general public: the lower deck crew rest.

Perhaps the most impressive part of this compartment is how quiet it is, especially in the bunks furthest from the door. It’s the ultimate luxury on a plane: silence. Even the nicest first class seats still sometimes hear the grating echoes of someone else’s unruly screaming offspring.

Pets On A Plane.

When airlines are in the news, it’s almost never for a good reason.

As the headlines have it, United’s brutish handling of its human customers seems to be outdone only by the way it treats pets. First we had the demise of Simon, the giant rabbit who perished aboard one of United’s London-to-Chicago flights last year. Then, a week ago, on a United flight between Houston and LaGuardia, a flight attendant demanded that an exit-row passenger put her ten-month-old French bulldog in an overhead bin, where it subsequently died either from suffocation or stress. And stop the press: a day after formally apologizing for the overhead bin incident, United accidentally shipped a German shepherd to Tokyo instead of to Kansas City.  

In the case of the bulldog puppy, I can’t imagine the flight attendant thought the dog would be harmed, but still it was a terrible decision. So what’s going on here? Is there something endemically dysfunctional at United that’s leading to screw-ups like these?

I’m not sure. United’s record does compare poorly against the other biggest airlines. United recorded 18 animal deaths in 2017, out of around 75,000 that were carried. On the other hand, the numbers overall are small, which makes comparisons like this tricky. Each of the nation’s major carriers operate thousands of flights every day of the week. Unfortunate (and avoidable) as these accidents are, they’re bound to happen, and the numbers, through little more than chance, can paint one airline as guiltier than another. The media, meanwhile, both the social kind and the kind that used to matter, is out for blood, and pity the airline — particularly the one whose name begins with U — that so much as looks crossly at a customer’s doggie or kitty.

Unless of course that doggie or kitty — or pot-bellied pig, or iguana, or llama (yes) — is playing dress-up and posing as an “emotional support animal.” Yeah, the whole faux service animal thing has been simmering for some time now, and the airlines — most of them — are finally cracking down. The timing is bad here, maybe, as the new policies, together with the death of the bulldog puppy and the wayward shepherd, could make you think that airlines are decidedly hostile to pets. Which they are not.

I’m not gonna get too deep into the service animal thing. As an animal lover, I’m of the mind that we should have more animals — and perhaps fewer passengers — on our planes. Also, and despite my protests, my mother once attempted to have her beloved miniature greyhound dubiously certified in this manner.

“I cannot ship him below deck!” she insisted. “There’s no heat or oxygen down there!”

That, incidentally, is false. Which brings us to the real point of this post, which is to give some comfort to those people who are anxious about shipping their pets in the freight compartment. I can understand how tempting it is to want your critter with you right there in the cabin (though no, not in the overhead locker, unless perhaps it’s a python or a bat), but fear not the lower holds.

A lot of people are under the impression that the underfloor spaces are freezing and unpressurized. Not true. At 35,000 feet the outside temperature is about 60 degrees below zero and there isn’t enough oxygen to breathe. That’s worse than economy, and transporting animals in these conditions would rightfully displease their owners and animal rights groups. So, yes, the underfloor holds are always pressurized and heated. On most planes there’s a particular zone designated for animals. This tends to be the zone with the warmest and most consistent temperature. Maintaining a steady, comfortable temperature while aloft is relatively easy, but it can be tricky on the ground in hot weather, and for this reason some airlines embargo pets during the summer months.

Of the two million or so animals carried in the United States each year, a small number perish, whether due to stress or mishandling. How well a pet endures the experience depends a good deal on the individual animal’s health and temperament. If your dog or cat (or rabbit or macaw) is elderly, ill, or easily stressed or spooked, perhaps sending him or her through multiple time zones in a noisy and confined space isn’t the smartest idea. My best advice is to consult with a veterinarian.