Pilot Tammie Jo Shults, whose Southwest plane suffered engine failure, speaks about her military aviation career

OSHKOSH, Wis. — Tammie Jo Shults didn't grow up in an aviation family or even a military one, but she first found her love of flying in a book about a martyred missionary pilot in Ecuador.

Growing up on a ranch near Tularosa, New Mexico, Shults said she didn't have access to television. So books such as Jungle Pilot, about missionary Nate Saint killed in 1956, were an important influence on her decision to become a Navy aviator.

She also watched jet planes take off and land at Holloman Air Force Base to the southwest near her home, she said Wednesday night at the Experimental Aircraft Association's AirVenture annual fly-in and convention, which has been held in Oshkosh since 1970.

Shults, 56, was captain of Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 on April 17 when a fan blade on the twin-engine Boeing 737 flying from New York to Dallas failed. Debris sprayed one side of the plane, piercing a window and causing the aircraft to decompress.

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Passenger Jennifer Riordan was partially sucked through the window and died; eight other passengers suffered minor injuries. Meanwhile the plane rolled about 40 degrees before Shults and First Officer Darren Ellisor were able to bring it level and started emergency procedures as the plane was diverted to the Philadelphia airport.

Shults was commended for her calm during the emergency. It turned out she wasn’t scheduled to pilot that day but had swapped shifts with her husband, whom she met in the Navy.

Shults, her husband and son are EAA members. Although she was not available to the press during EAA AirVenture, she spoke Wednesday night in a panel of seven female military aviators.

She didn’t talk about the Southwest flight but spoke about her mentors and how she chose aviation as a career.

When she decided to join the Navy after the Air Force turned her down, “Initially, my dad said, ‘Nice girls don’t do that,’ ” Shults said. But her parents warmed to the idea and fully supported her decision to join the military.

Most of her mentors were male because she was often the only female in her flight school class and the units she served in later. After becoming an ensign in 1985, she trained to fly the T-34 and earned her pilot’s wings.

She became an instructor and served in the Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron at the Pacific Missile Test Center, now called the Naval Air Warfare Center, near Oxnard, California.

Later, she qualified for the F/A-18 Hornet and became one of the first female pilots to fly that jet.

When women finally were allowed to fly combat missions in 1993, “we faced a lot of pushback,” she told the AirVenture audience. “F-18s had never been invaded by women before and there was some ‘it’s my sandbox’ ” from male pilots.

Shults served as a flight instructor for male aviators during the Gulf War and later served in the Navy Reserve, flying Hornets until August 2001. After leaving the Navy, she became a pilot for Southwest Airlines.

Follow Meg Jones on Twitter: @MegJonesJS

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