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Southwest 1380: What we know and don't know about the emergency landing in Philadelphia

One woman is dead and several others are injured after a Southwest Airlines flight's engine failed midair Tuesday, causing an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport.

Firefighters spray a Southwest Airlines plane with a damaged engine at Philadelphia International Airport in Philadelphia, PA on April 17, 2018. The plane made an emergency landing.
Firefighters spray a Southwest Airlines plane with a damaged engine at Philadelphia International Airport in Philadelphia, PA on April 17, 2018. The plane made an emergency landing.Read moreDAVID MAIALETTI / Staff Photographer

One woman has died and several others were injured after an engine on a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 failed in flight Tuesday, forcing the crew to make an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport.

An investigation is ongoing, though many questions remain. Here's a breakdown of what we know and what we don't a day after the fatal incident.

What We Know

  1. The Southwest flight took off from New York's LaGuardia Airport, bound for Love Field in Dallas around 10:45 a.m. Tuesday, carrying 144 passengers and five crew members. The engine apparently blew shortly after takeoff around 11:15 a.m. at 32,500 feet. A window broke, pulling a female passenger partially out, enveloping parts of the cabin with smoke and prompting the emergency landing at PHL.

  2. Many passengers described being afraid for their lives, while some grabbed their phones to say what they believed were their last goodbyes to friends and loved ones through text and Facebook Live.

  3. The Boeing-737 is an 18-year-old aircraft. It was certified through 2021, according to FAA records.

  4. The plane landed safely at PHL at 11:23 a.m. where emergency crews attended to a fuel leak and a small fire in the engine. The incident was placed under control at 12:32 p.m., said Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Adam Thiel.

  5. An investigation from the National Transportation Safety Board into the incident could likely take more than a year.

  6. CFM56 engines, like those on the plane, have been the subject of concern. Less than a year ago, both the Federal Aviation Administration and the engine's manufacturer drew attention to problems with metal fatigue on the fan blades in the CFM56 engine series, after a similar incident in 2016, also involving a Southwest plane. The FAA proposed a directive that planes with extensive miles on their engines should subject the fan blades on those engines to a specific test designed to detect flaws in metal.

  7. Investigators found part of the metal cowl that surrounds the engine in Bernville, Berks County, about 75 miles northwest of Philadelphia.

  8. Jennifer Riordan, of Albuquerque, N.M., was taken to the hospital after the landing but later died. She was a vice president of community relations with Wells Fargo, a wife and a mother of two. Seven other people were treated for injuries.

  9. Riordan's cause of death was "blunt impact trauma of the head, neck, and torso," according to the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office.

  10. The jet has been towed to the Atlantic Aviation Terminal at the airport.

What we don’t know

  1. What exactly caused the engine to fail. The NTSB's investigation will look at metal fatigue and a fan blade that broke off from one of the plane's engines, Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday.

  2. When the engine was last inspected.