*The National Transportation Safety Board says the 2018 incident began with a broken fan blade piercing the plane’s engine cover.
Boeing should redesign engine covers on all its 737NG aircraft following an accident that killed a mother-of-two, investigators have said.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) looked at the April 2018 incident, which saw an engine fan blade break and its debris pierce the engine cover before hitting the fuselage near a window.
The window shattered, leading to rapid depressurisation and Jennifer Riordan, a 43-year-old banker and mother of two from Albuquerque, New Mexico, being partially sucked out of the plane.
Other passengers managed to pull her back inside but efforts to save her life were unsuccessful.
Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 had been travelling from New York City’s LaGuardia to Dallas when it made an emergency landing in Philadelphia with 144 passengers and five crew on board.
The NTSB said the 24 blades in the plane’s CFM-56-7B engine were 18 years old and had been used on more than 32,000 flights before that day.
