The Southwest Airlines pilot being lauded as a hero in a harrowing emergency landing after a passenger was partially blown out of the jet's damaged fuselage is also being hailed for her pioneering role in a career where she has been one of the few women at the controls.
Tammie Jo Shults, one of the first female fighter pilots in the U.S. Navy, was the captain and piloting the Dallas-bound Flight 1380 when it made an emergency landing Tuesday in Philadelphia, according to her husband, Dean Shults.
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The Southwest Airlines pilot being lauded as a hero in a harrowing emergency landing after a passenger was partially blown out of the jet's damaged fuselage is also being hailed for her pioneering role in a career where she has been one of the few women at the controls.
One of the engines on the Boeing 737 exploded while the plane was traveling 500 mph (800 kph) at 30,000 feet (9144 m) with 149 people on board. Shrapnel hit the plane and passengers said they had to rescue a woman who was being blown out of a damaged window. The woman later died of blunt force trauma to her head, neck and torso.
"On behalf of the entire Crew, we appreciate the outpouring of support from the public and our coworkers as we all reflect on one family's profound loss," the two pilots said in the statement, adding that their "hearts are heavy."
Shults was commissioned into the Navy in 1985 and reached the rank of lieutenant commander, said Commander Ron Flanders, the spokesman for Naval Air Forces in San Diego.
Veteran Navy combat aviator Linda Maloney said that she and Shults were among a small group of women who worked to see the combat exclusion rule repealed.
In this image provided by the U.S. Navy, Lt. Tammie Jo Shults, one of the first women to fly Navy tactical aircraft, poses in front of an F/A-18A with Tactical Electronics Warfare Squadron (VAQ) 34 in 1992. (Thomas P. Milne/U.S. Navy via AP)
One of the engines on the Boeing 737 exploded while the plane was traveling 500 mph (800 kph) at 30,000 feet (9144 m) with 149 people on board. Shrapnel hit the plane and passengers said they had to rescue a woman who was being blown out of a damaged window. The woman later died of blunt force trauma to her head, neck and torso.
Shults calmly relayed details about the crisis to air traffic controllers, and passengers commended her handling of the situation.
In a statement late Wednesday, Shults and First Officer Darren Ellisor said they felt like they were simply doing their jobs.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators examine damage to the engine of the Southwest Airlines plane that made an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport in Philadelphia on Tuesday, April 17, 2018. (NTSB via AP)
"On behalf of the entire Crew, we appreciate the outpouring of support from the public and our coworkers as we all reflect on one family's profound loss," the two pilots said in the statement, adding that their "hearts are heavy."
Friends at Shults' church in Boerne, Texas, about 30 miles northwest of San Antonio, said Wednesday they were not surprised after listening to the recording and reading media reports about her actions.
"Everybody is talking about Tammie Jo and how cool and calm she was in a crisis, and that's just Tammie Jo," Rachel Russo said. "That's how she's wired."
A Southwest Airlines plane sits on the runway at the Philadelphia International Airport after it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia, on Tuesday, April 17, 2018. (AP Photo/Corey Perrine)
Shults was commissioned into the Navy in 1985 and reached the rank of lieutenant commander, said Commander Ron Flanders, the spokesman for Naval Air Forces in San Diego.
Women aviators were excluded from combat missions until the month after Shults got off active duty in March 1993, but Flanders said Shults flew during Operation Desert Storm trainings as an aggressor enemy pilot.
"While we at that time had an exclusion, she was in fact helping male pilots hone their skills," Flanders said.
A Southwest Airlines plane sits on the runway at the Philadelphia International Airport after it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia, on Tuesday, April 17, 2018. (AP Photo/Corey Perrine)
Veteran Navy combat aviator Linda Maloney said that she and Shults were among a small group of women who worked to see the combat exclusion rule repealed.
"Obviously it was frustrating," said Maloney, who became among the first women to join a combat military flying squadron and was deployed to the Arabian Gulf. "We go through the same training that the guys do, and our hope was the Navy would allow us to fly in combat at some point."
Shults was featured in Maloney's book "Military Fly Moms" along with the stories and photos of 69 other women U.S. military veterans.
The engine on a Southwest Airlines plane is inspected as it sits on the runway at the Philadelphia International Airport after it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia, Tuesday, April 17, 2018. (Amanda Bourman via AP)
Russo and Staci Thompson, who has known Shults for about 20 years and was nanny to her two children when they were small, said she "loved" her military career but has alluded to frustrations and challenges that came with it.
They also said she embraced those experiences to make her stronger and guide her into a role as a mentor to young female pilots or girls thinking about a military career.
"She learned a lot about overcoming things as a woman in a male-dominated field," Russo said.
Shults is from New Mexico, according to a personnel file from the Navy, and was a 1983 graduate of MidAmerica Nazarene University in Olathe, Kansas, where she earned degrees in biology and agribusiness.
Shults' brother-in-law, Gary Shults, said her husband also is a Southwest pilot and told him she made the emergency landing.
"She's a formidable woman, as sharp as a tack," said Gary Shults, a dentist in San Antonio. "My brother says she's the best pilot he knows."
Boeing said Wednesday that it lost $355 million on falling revenue in the first quarter, another sign of the crisis gripping the aircraft manufacturer as it faces increasing scrutiny over the safety of its planes and accusations of shoddy work from a growing number of whistleblowers.
CEO David Calhoun said the company is in “a tough moment,” and its focus is on fixing its manufacturing issues, not the financial results.
Company executives have been forced to talk more about safety and less about finances since a door plug blew out of a Boeing 737 Max during an Alaska Airlines flight in January, leaving a gaping hole in the plane.
The accident halted progress that Boeing seemed to be making while recovering from two deadly crashes of Max jets in 2018 and 2019. Those crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia, which killed 346 people, are now back in the spotlight, too.
About a dozen relatives of passengers who died in the second crash met with government officials for several hours Wednesday in Washington. They asked the officials to revive a criminal fraud charge against the company by determining that Boeing violated terms of a 2021 settlement, but left disappointed.
Boeing officials made no mention of the meeting, but talked repeatedly while discussing the quarterly earnings of a renewed focus on safety.
“Although we report first-quarter financial results today, our focus remains on the sweeping actions we are taking following the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 accident,” Calhoun told employees in a memo Wednesday.
Calhoun ticked off a series of actions the company is taking and reported “significant progress” in improving manufacturing quality, much of it by slowing down production, which means fewer planes for its airline customers. Calhoun told CNBC that closer inspections were resulting in 80% fewer flaws in the fuselages coming from key supplier Spirit AeroSystems.
“Near term, yes, we are in a tough moment,” he wrote to employees. “Lower deliveries can be difficult for our customers and for our financials. But safety and quality must and will come above all else.”
Calhoun, who will step down at the end of the year, said again he is fully confident the company will recover.
Calhoun became CEO in early 2020 as Boeing struggled to recover from the Max crashes, which led regulators to ground the planes worldwide for nearly two years. The company thought it had sidestepped any risk of criminal prosecution when the Justice Department agreed not to try the company for fraud if it complied with U.S. anti-fraud laws for three years — a period that ended in January.
Boeing has been reaching confidential settlements with the families of passengers who died, but the relatives of those killed in the Ethiopia crash are continuing to press the Justice Department to prosecute the company in federal district court in Texas, where the settlement was filed. On Wednesday, department officials told relatives that the agency is still considering the matter.
Leaving the meeting, Paul Cassell, a lawyer for the families, called it “all for show.” He said the Justice Department appears determined to defend the agreement it brokered in secret with Boeing.
“We simply want that case to move forward and let the jury decide if Boeing is a criminal or not,” he said.
It was an emotional meeting, according to Nadia Milleron, whose daughter Samya Stumo died in the 2019 crash.
“People are angry. People are shouting. People are starting to talk over other people,” said Milleron, who watched online from her home in Massachusetts while her husband attended in person. Relatives believe the Justice Department is “overlooking a mountain of evidence against Boeing. It's mystifying,” she said.
According to Milleron, the head of the fraud section of the Justice Department’s criminal division, Glenn Leon, said his agency could extend its review beyond this summer, seek a trial against Boeing on the charge of defrauding regulators who approved the Max, or ask a judge to dismiss the charge. She said Leon made no commitments.
The Justice Department declined to comment.
A federal judge and an appeals court ruled last year that they had no power to overturn the Boeing settlement. Families of the crash victims hoped the government would reconsider prosecuting Boeing after the Jan. 5 door-plug blowout on the Alaska Airlines jetliner as the plane flew above Oregon.
Investigators looking into the Alaska flight say bolts that help keep the door plug in place were missing after repair work at a Boeing factory. The FBI told passengers that they might be crime victims.
Boeing stock has plunged by about one-third since the blowout. The Federal Aviation Administration has stepped up its oversight and given Boeing until late May to produce a plan to fix problems in manufacturing 737 Max jets. Airline customers are unhappy about not getting all the new planes that they had ordered because of delivery disruptions.
The company said it paid $443 million in compensation to airlines for the grounding of Max 9 jets after the Alaska accident.
Several former and one current manager have reported various problems in manufacturing of Boeing 737 and 787 jetliners. The most recent, a quality engineer, told Congress last week that Boeing is taking manufacturing shortcuts that could eventually cause 787 Dreamliners to break apart. Boeing pushed back aggressively against his claims.
Boeing, however, has a couple things in its favor.
Along with Airbus, Boeing forms one-half of a duopoly that dominates the manufacturing of large passenger planes. Both companies have yearslong backlogs of orders from airlines eager for new, more fuel-efficient planes. And Boeing is a major defense contractor for the Pentagon and governments around the world.
Richard Aboulafia, a longtime industry analyst and consultant at AeroDynamic Advisory, said despite all the setbacks Boeing still has a powerful mix of products in high demand, technology and people.
“Even if they are No. 2 and have major issues, they are still in a very strong market and an industry that has very high barriers to entry,” he said.
And despite massive losses — about $24 billion in the last five years — the company is not at risk of failing, Aboulafia said.
“This isn’t General Motors in 2008 or Lockheed in 1971,” Aboulafia said, referring to two iconic corporations that needed massive government bailouts or loan guarantees to survive.
All of those factors help explain why 20 analysts in a FactSet survey rate Boeing shares as “Buy” or “Overweight” and only two have “Sell” ratings. (Five have “Hold” ratings.)
Boeing said the first-quarter loss, excluding special items came to $1.13 per share, which was better than the loss of $1.63 per share that analysts had forecast, according to a FactSet survey.
Revenue fell 7.5%, to $16.57 billion.
Moody's downgraded Boeing's unsecured debt one notch to Baa3, the lowest investment-grade rating, citing the weak performance of the commercial-airplanes business.
Boeing Co. shares closed down 3%. They have dropped 34% since the Alaska blowout.
FILE - Rescuers work at the scene of an Ethiopian Airlines flight of a Boeing 737 Max 8 plane crash near Bishoftu, or Debre Zeit, south of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, March 11, 2019. Boeing said Wednesday, April 24, 2024, that it lost $355 million on falling revenue in the first quarter, another sign of the crisis gripping the aircraft manufacturer as it faces increasing scrutiny over the safety of its planes and accusations of shoddy work. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene, File)
FILE - Wreckage lies at the scene of an Ethiopian Airlines flight of a Boeing 737 Max 8 plane that crashed shortly after takeoff at Hejere near Bishoftu, or Debre Zeit, some 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, March 10, 2019. Boeing said Wednesday, April 24, 2024, that it lost $355 million on falling revenue in the first quarter, another sign of the crisis gripping the aircraft manufacturer as it faces increasing scrutiny over the safety of its planes and accusations of shoddy work. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - Boeing 737 Max airplanes, including one belonging to TUI Group, left, sit parked at a storage lot, Monday, April 26, 2021, near Boeing Field in Seattle. Boeing reports earnings on Wednesday, April 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)
