A pilot who safely landed a Southwest Airlines passenger plane after a jet engine ripped apart mid-air has been praised as a hero by passengers.
Tammie Jo Shults steered Flight 1380 to a Philadelphia airport in the incident on Tuesday, according to passengers.
Shrapnel from the shredded engine smashed a window and nearly sucked a passenger out of the jet. That woman, a mother-of-two, later died.
Mrs Shults served in the US Navy for 10 years and flew fighter jets.
A cause has yet to be determined, but officials said an early review of the incident found evidence of metal fatigue where a fan blade had broken off, according to the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
The woman who died was Jennifer Riordan, a 43-year-old executive for Wells Fargo bank from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Other passengers pulled her back in as she was almost sucked out of the shattered window and performed CPR, but to no avail.
Seven other passengers were slightly injured.
Those aboard the New York-to-Dallas flight carrying 149 people lauded Mrs Shults as an "American Hero" who prevented a much larger tragedy.
Shults has not been officially named by Southwest Airlines, but passengers who were on the flight have identified her as the pilot. Her husband has also confirmed to the Associated Press that she was at the controls of the plane.
She was among the first cohort of female fighter pilots to transition to tactical aircraft, the US Navy has confirmed.
The New Mexico native graduated with university degrees in biology and agribusiness before joining the military.
According to the US Navy, she left active service in 1993 after achieving the rank of lieutenant commander.
Her husband is also a pilot for Southwest, says a relative.
On social media, some compared the mother-of-two with Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who glided a US Airways plane into New York's main waterway in 2009 in what became known as "The Miracle on the Hudson".