Death on Southwest Plane Shatters Record U.S. Safety String
- Woman dies after engine explodes, debris strikes window
- U.S. had gone nine years without a single passenger fatality
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Almost 100 million U.S.-operated airline flights, carrying several billion people, had taken off and landed safely in this country over a nine-year span since the last time a passenger died in an accident.
That record for avoiding fatalities -- which had never been approached in the history of modern aviation -- was splintered in an instant Tuesday when an engine on a Southwest Airlines Co. plane exploded mid-air, spewing shrapnel into a window and killing a passenger.