Pilot of Southwest flight with blown engine was one of Navy's first female fighter pilots

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A Southwest Airlines pilot who made an emergency landing Tuesday after the jet apparently blew an engine, got hit by shrapnel and lost a window, is being praised for her "nerves of steel" in helping to prevent a far worse tragedy after the catastrophe killed one passenger and left seven others hurt.

Tammie Jo Shults was at the controls of the Dallas-bound Flight 1380 when it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia, said her husband, Dean Shults. The twin-engine Boeing 737 that left New York with 149 people board was hit by shrapnel that smashed a window and damaged the fuselage, killing a passenger and injuring seven others, authorities said. The pilot took the plane into a rapid descent as passengers using oxygen masks that dropped from the ceiling braced for impact.

Shults was among the first female fighter pilots in the U.S. military, according to friends and the alumni group at Shults' alma mater, MidAmerica Nazarene.

Shults was a 1983 graduate of the university in Olathe, Kansas, where she earned degrees in biology and agribusiness, said Carol Best, a university spokeswoman told The Kansas City Star.

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