At Southwest Airlines, the Minutes After Disaster Struck

How top management, using updates from the cockpit and passengers’ phones, put the emergency-response plan into action in Philadelphia and Dallas

A Southwest Airlines passenger broadcast a video on Facebook Live midair after an engine broke apart, apparently rupturing a window and killing a passenger.
By

All Southwest Airlines senior executives were at a Dallas hotel for a day-long meeting on leadership development last week when suddenly phones blared in unison around the room: Flight 1380 was in serious trouble.

The team had a quick conference call with the airline’s operation center, then raced to headquarters nearby. From there they put an emergency-response plan into action.

The...