Southwest Airlines Flight In That Emergency Landing Caused The Death Of A Passenger
BALDWIN: Investigators are pulling the evidence of quote/unquote "metal fatigue" in that engine. It failed causing the death of the passenger on that Southwest Airlines flight in that emergency landing. Southwest has announced it is accelerating engine inspections. There has been checking all those fan blades right there inside that engine. The FBI in Philadelphia wants anyone who runs any pieces of plane debris, finds them, contact them immediately. Meantime, passengers on this flight are praising as a hero the veteran Navy fighter pilot who was at the helm of this airplane who landed that 737.</s>JOE MARCUS, SOUTHWEST AIRLINES FLIGHT 1380 PASSENGER: This is unbelievable. I mean, she is true hero. You know, the courage she took for her to take full control that situation that like to save everyone onboard, it was just really unbelievable. I feel like I did win the lottery a bit as soon as that plane landed. It was like oh, my goodness, this is crazy. But I'm just trying to, you know, move on and, you know, just put it behind me.</s>BALDWIN: Let's go straight to Alan Armstrong, a pilot and aviation attorney who does also represent crash victims. And he is standing next to this big engine, similar to the one on the plane, like the one on the Southwest plane. Obviously not the same A-737 but, you know, show me what these metal - these fan blades are and what metal fatigue means exactly.</s>ALAN ARMSTRONG, PILOT AND AVIATION ATTORNEY: Hey, Brooke, good afternoon. A jet engine has been called a cylinder of spinning sabers. So let's consider the geometry and the anatomy of a jet engine. Here's your cylinder. And here in fact are your fan blades that compress the air that's brought into the engine. The air is compressed and compressed and compressed. It's then ignited and expelled out the back of the engine giving the aircraft power. These are your sabers. They are</s>BALDWIN: So Alan, if I may jump in and ask what whether we are hearing about this metal fatigue, which part of that engine -- what would have -- where would the metal fatigue have existed? Somewhere internally?</s>ARMSTRONG: Well, normally, what you have here with a jet engine, a jet engine is cold and then it's hot. It's cold and it's hot. And when it gets hot, it expands. And as you have the expansion and contraction, expansion and contraction, fatigue can build up in the part with the result that there will eventually be a catastrophic failure. And that's what we had yesterday apparently.</s>BALDWIN: I see. If I may just ask you to put on your lawyer hat for me and talk to me about you represented - you have represented crash victims before. Based upon what you know, do you think a lawsuit is coming? Would there be cause for that?</s>ARMSTRONG: I think any competent trial lawyer would look very carefully at the history of this engine and conclude that perhaps there's a product liability claim. We have a similar loss in 2016. So this is not the first time we've had a failure of this particular type of aircraft engine.</s>BALDWIN: Alan Armstrong, thank you so much.</s>ARMSTRONG: You are very welcome. Thank you.</s>BALDWIN: Coming up next, President Trump lashes out at Stormy Daniels for the first time, calling her sketch of this man who allegedly threatened her to keep her quiet a, quote, "con job." We'll talk to a sketch artist and an attorney next to discuss where this goes next from here.