A catastrophic engine failure on a Southwest Airlines flight from New York to Dallas left one person dead and prompted an emergency landing in Philadelphia.
Witnesses said the jet parts hit a window, seriously injuring a woman who later died. The identity of the dead person has not yet disclosed.
Reports from the US say that a female passenger was injured when she was partially sucked into a window near the afflicted engine before being pulled back into the aircraft by other passengers.
Southwest flight 1380, a Boeing 737, encountered a problem with the engine shortly after take-off from New York's LaGuardia airport.
It landed at Philadelphia International Airport at 11.20am (3.20pm Irish time) after the crew reported damage to one of the engines, the fuselage and at least one window.
What a flight! Made it!! Still here!! #southwest #flight1380 pic.twitter.com/Cx2mqoXVzY
— Joe Marcus (@joeasaprap) April 17, 2018
Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, confirmed that there was one fatality.
"We are saying this is an engine failure," he said, confirming that parts flew out of the engine.
The plane was carrying 143 passengers and five crew members.
"Something is wrong with our plane! It appears we are going down!" wrote passenger Marty Martinez in the caption to a Facebook live-stream video that showed him looking panicked and breathing through an oxygen mask.
"Engine exploded in the air and blew open window three seats away from me. Explosion critically injured woman sitting in the seat next to the window," he wrote on Facebook.
Another passenger told CNN he heard a loud bang during the journey and saw damage to the engine.
"All of a sudden, we heard this loud bang, rattling, it felt like one of the engines went out. The oxygen masks dropped," he said.
"It just shredded the left-side engine completely ... it was scary."
Television and social media images showed that most of the outer casing around the left engine of the Boeing Co 737-700 had ripped away and a window near the engine on the plane's left side was missing.
Boeing said on Twitter that it was aware of the incident and was "gathering more information".
The plane's engines are made by CFM International, a French-US venture co-owned by Safran and General Electric, which was not immediately available for comment.
