The pilot's voice was calm yet focused as her plane descended, telling air traffic control she had "149 souls" on board and was carrying 21,000 pounds - or about five hours' worth - of fuel.
"Southwest 1380, we're single engine," said Capt. Tammie Jo Shults, a former fighter pilot with the Navy. "We have part of the aircraft missing, so we're going to need to slow down a bit." She asked for medical personnel to meet her aircraft on the runway. "We've got injured passengers."
"Injured passengers, OK, and is your airplane physically on fire?" asked the air traffic controller, according to audio of the interaction.
"No, it's not on fire, but part of it's missing," Shults said, pausing for a moment. "They said there's a hole, and, uh, someone went out."
Passengers on the southwest flight said that Tammie Jo Shults was talking to them very calmly and gave them hope throughout the harrowing journey
The engine on Shults's plane had, in fact, exploded Tuesday, spraying shrapnel into the aircraft, causing a window to be blown out and leaving one woman dead and seven other people injured.
The National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday that investigators will examine whether metal fatigue caused an engine fan of the Boeing 737-700 to snap midflight. The protective engine housing broke off, and pieces were later recovered in fields in Berks County, Pennsylvania, 70 miles northwest of Philadelphia International Airport.
The wing on the side of the plane where the explosion occurred suffered damage that left it "banged up pretty good," NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said. The cabin window blew out with such force that none of the materials were recovered inside the plane, baffling investigators, he said.
"We didn't see any shards of glass [that blew in] - I say glass, but it's acrylic," Sumwalt said. "We found no evidence at all of any broken acrylic inside."
In the midst of the chaos, Shults deftly guided the plane onto the runway, touching down at 190 mph, saving the lives of 148 people aboard and averting a far worse catastrophe.
"She has nerves of steel," passenger Alfred Tumlinson said Wednesday.
When the engine exploded, Tumlinson, 55, was sitting with his wife on the plane's left side, in the second aisle from the back. The couple from George West, Texas, sent texts to their children, telling them the plane was going down and that they loved them.
"Did we think we were going to make it?" Tumlinson asked, turning to his wife. "No."
"I got another day of my life because of that lady and the co-pilot," he said. "What do you want to know about [Shults] other than she's an angel?"
Tumlinson described how soon after the explosion, a soothing voice came over the intercom.
"She was talking to us very calmly," Tumlinson said. " 'We're descending, we're not going down, we're descending, just stay calm, brace yourselves,' " he recalled Shults saying.
" 'Everybody keep your masks on.' "
Finally, passengers were told to brace themselves, he said.
" 'Everybody, you got to lean forward - hands up on the seat in the front, you got to know that you're coming down, and you're coming down hard,' " Tumlinson said, becoming emotional while recounting the experience. "But she didn't slam it down. She brought the bird down very carefully."
The plane stabilized on the runway. Then, a moment of relief.
"She was so cool when she brought that down into the Philadelphia airport," Tumlinson said. "Everybody just was applauding. I'm just telling you they were just applauding. It was amazing that we made it to the ground."
The passengers were told to remain calm while medics came on board. Soon after, Shults came into the cabin to check on passengers. "She came back and talked to every individual in there personally and shook every hand," Tumlinson recalled, taking note of one other detail. "She had a bomber jacket on."
Tumlinson's wife, Diana McBride Self, called Shults "a true American hero."
Others on social media agreed and compared Shults with Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who guided his US Airways plane to safety in New York's Hudson River in 2009.
Shults declined to comment. Her mother-in-law, Virginia Shults, said that as soon as she heard the pilot's voice on the radio transmission online, she said, "That is Tammie Jo."
"It was just as if she and I were sitting here talking," Virginia Shults said. "She's a very calming person."
Jennifer Riordan, an Albuquerque mother of two children and a vice president at Wells Fargo, was the passenger who died. Witnesses said two men and several flight attendants came to Riordan's aid after she was pulled toward the blown-out window.
Riordan was seated in Row 14, the same row as the missing window, Sumwalt said.
Sumwalt said that investigators are aware of reports from passengers that Riordan was nearly sucked out of the plane, but that "we have not corroborated that ourselves."
"We need to corroborate that," Sumwalt said. "There's 144 passengers on the airplane, many of whom were seated behind her. I think that we will have some good information based on that, based on the airplane and also based on the medical examiner's report. I think we'll be able to have a good idea of what actually happened."