Pilot had flown Navy fighters
BOERNE, Texas — Tammie Jo Shults was determined to “break into the club” of male military aviators.
One of the first female fighter pilots in the U.S. Navy, Shults flew training missions as an enemy pilot during Operation Desert Storm, while working with other women to see a rule excluding them from combat flights repealed.
Twenty-five years later, Shults was at the controls of the Dallas-bound Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 Tuesday when it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia after one of the engines on the Boeing 737 exploded while the plane was traveling 500 mph at 30,000 feet 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 controllers, and passengers commended her handling of the situation.
“Everybody is talking about Tammie Jo and how cool and calm she was in a crisis, and that’s just Tammie Jo,” said Rachel Russo, a friend from Shults’ church in Boerne, Texas. “That’s how she’s wired.”
Shults was commissioned into the Navy in 1985 and reached the rank of lieutenant commander.
