A woman was killed on April 17, 2018 after a jet engine apparently exploded in mid-air and its shrapnel reportedly crashed through her window on a Southwest flight to Dallas. The incident forced the 737-700 Boeing aircraft, Flight 1380 that had taken off from New York, to emergency land in Philadelphia. 

Witnesses told the press that they saw the woman passenger being sucked out the broken window with fellow passengers trying to hold her in the plane as oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling of the plane. Many said they feared the plane was going to crash.   

The plane reportedly depressurized at 30,000 feet, injuring many others on the flight when the incident occurred about 20 minutes after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport. It is reported that 144 passengers and five crew members were on the plane. 

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has investigators on site at the Philadelphia airport to examine the cause of the tragedy. 

What was described as "chaos" brings to mind the crash landing of United Airlines Flight 232 in Sioux City, Iowa, in July, 1989, relating to a catastrophic failure of its tail-mounted engine.  Clifford Law Offices, a nationally recognized aviation crash law firm, represented a number of families who lost loved ones and served as co-lead counsel in these aviation crash cases.

More recently, American Airlines Flight 383 aborted take-off at Chicago's O'Hare Airport after it caught fire in October, 2016, involving nickel-alloy based fan disk problems on the aircraft. 

"It is clear that catastrophic, uncontained jet engine failures have not been adequately prevented by aircraft and jet engine manufacturers and the airlines that operate them". "Immediate safety inspections should be taking place on the entire fleet of similar engines." said Clifford Law Offices Founder and Senior Partner Robert A. Clifford.