McCaskill ribs Air Force over female Navy vet who landed Southwest plane

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) on Wednesday praised the female pilot who successfully made an emergency landing after an engine on her Southwest plane exploded, and chided Air Force officials for at one point turning the pilot away after she sought to join the service. 

Tammie Jo Shults, one of the first female Navy fighter pilots, landed Southwest Flight 1380 in an emergency landing Tuesday in Philadelphia. One of the plane’s engines suffered massive failure and exploded, with a piece breaking off, shattering a window and partly pulling a female passenger out of the aircraft. One passenger later died.

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“I know that you all would like to go back and change the decision but … she tried to be in the Air Force first. You guys weren’t taking women pilots at the time,” McCaskill told Air Force officials testifying at a Senate Armed Services Committee subpanel hearing.

“I’m glad that we have rectified that throughout our military since, obviously, she showed tremendous skill and poise at one of the most critical moments a pilot could ever face, so I had to tease you a little bit about that before I began my questions.”

The Navy has released Shults’s service record, which shows that she received a commission on June 21, 1985, graduated from flight school in 1989 and was promoted to lieutenant commander in December 1995.

She eventually became an instructor pilot for the F/A-18 Hornet and the EA-6B Prowler.

“We can confirm that [Lt. Cmdr.] Shults was among the first cohort of women pilots to transition to tactical aircraft,” Navy spokeswoman Lt. Christina Sears said in a statement.

Shults left active duty in 1993 — right as the Navy finally allowed women to fly in combat operations — but she stayed in the Navy Reserve until she retired in August 2001.

She has since been heralded for keeping cool during the Southwest landing. In air traffic control audio, Shults’s voice is calm as she describes the emergency.

“We have a part of the aircraft missing,” she told air traffic control. “Could you have the medical meet us there on the runway as well? We’ve got injured passengers.”

After the landing Shults reportedly walked through the aisle and talked with passengers to make sure they were uninjured.