[Read more about Tammie Jo Shults, the veteran Navy pilot who landed the plane]

The Southwest plane, a two-engine Boeing 737, made an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport at about 11:20 a.m. It quickly lost altitude after the explosion and violently depressurized after shrapnel from the explosion burst through the window, said Max Kraidelman, 20, a passenger on the plane, Flight 1380.

Soon after the explosion, Ms. Riordan was partially sucked out, Mr. Kraidelman said.

“The top half of her torso was out the window,” he said. “There was a lot of blood because she was hit by some of the shrapnel coming off the engine after it exploded.”

Mr. Kraidelman said passengers and flight attendants struggled “to drag her back into the aircraft.” When they did, she was unconscious and seriously injured, and flight attendants and passengers tried to revive her. Upon seeing the scene, one flight attendant began to cry, Mr. Tranchin said.

“They were doing CPR on her and using the defibrillator while we were landing,” Mr. Kraidelman said. “They were working on her while everyone else had their oxygen mask on.”



Mr. Tranchin said that one of the passengers helping had at one point placed his lower back up against the opening in the plane, in an apparent effort to help with the compression. The man did this for the next 20 minutes, Mr. Tranchin said, adding that the man later told him that the pressure at his back had been extreme.