Southwest Airlines CEO expresses 'deepest sympathies' after passenger death following blown engine

A Southwest Airlines flight midday Tuesday made a harrowing emergency landing in Philadelphia, due to an apparent engine failure, with one passenger killed after nearly being sucked out of the plane, according to reports. Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly confirmed the death of the passenger and said he expressed his "deepest sympathies to the family and the loved ones of our deceased customer," and described incident as "a tragic loss," via Youtube. Television footage from CBS News of the craft which was en route to Dallas from New York, showed damage to the plane's left engine. Fox News reported that a passenger was "partially sucked" out of the Boeing 737-700 plane after the engine exploded in midair, compromising one of the passenger windows, as shrapnel from the blast cracked the glass. "Shrapnel hit the window causing a serious injury. No other details about that. Several medical personnel on the flight tended to the injured passenger," Kristopher Johnson, a passenger on the flight, told CNN. The engines of the plane are believed to be a CFM56, the best selling jet engine in the world, according to a company web site. An official told CBS News that CFM, a joint venture between General Electric and Safran Aircraft Engines, had sent representatives to the scene to help in the investigation of the engine failure. Shares of Southwest Airlines Co. closed down 1.1%. Shares of the airline company are down 17.1% so far this year, compared with a gain of 0.3% for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and a rise of 1.2% for the broad-market S&P 500 index , over the same period. Southwest Flight 1380 had 143 passengers and five crew aboard. One passenger, Marty Martinez, used Facebook Inc.'s video feature to document the landing, Facebook Live posting it with the caption "Something is wrong with our plane! It appears we are going down!" Another person identifying themselves via Twitter as Joe Marcus, tweeted a photo of what appears to be the plane's badly damaged left engine. The incident for Southwest comes as the airline has maintained a stellar safety record in its more-than 50-year history without a passenger death, according to a 2016 blog from The Points Guy. The Philadelphia airport via twitter said that flights were arriving and departing but that customers should expect delays. That tweet followed a call by the Federal Aviation Administration to ground flights waiting to depart from the airport.

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