Almost 100 million U.S.-operated airline flights, carrying several billion people, had taken off and landed safely over a nine-year span since the last time a passenger died in an accident in the country.
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. The plane, a Boeing 737-700 which was bound to Dallas from New York, made an emergency landing in Philadelphia.
The death of 43-year-old Jennifer Riordan on Flight 1380 was the first in a U.S. commercial aviation accident since 2009, according to National Transportation Safety Board statistics.