Rona Dougall: Nightmare at 32,000 feet was tragic and horrendous but one amazing pilot ensured it was not disastrous

IT It really is hard to comprehend the terror the men and women on board Flight 1380 must have experienced. Truly, the stuff of nightmares.

Thirty minutes into a routine flight from New York to Dallas, the left engine of the Boeing 737 exploded and shrapnel shattered one of the windows.

Passengers could only watch in horror as businesswoman Jennifer Riordan was almost sucked out of the jet’s damaged window at 32,000 feet.

The mother of two suffered fatal head injuries.

The poor woman. How I feel for her family, who waved her off on a business trip, never in a million years imagining that they would never see her alive again.

Aviation experts are reassuring us that this was an incredibly rare incident. David Gleave, who I interviewed this week on Scotland Tonight, could only think of one other incident like this in recent times.

We have come to believe that flying is safe as houses. And the statistics do back that up. It is the safest way to travel. You’re more likely to be knocked over by a bus than be involved in a plane accident.

But for many people the fear runs deep. I’m absolutely terrified of flying and the knowledge that it’s safer to be winging my way to my holiday destination than driving along the M8 on a wet winter’s night offers little comfort. And doesn’t relax my white- knuckled grip of the armrest.

The one beacon of light which shines from this awful, tragic accident is the amazing conduct of the Southwest Airlines Captain Tammie Jo Shults, who has been hailed a hero for calmly carrying out an emergency landing in the most testing of circumstances.

The passengers couldn’t have been in safer hands. This incredible woman was one of the first female fighter pilots in the US navy.

Hugely experienced and cool as a cucumber, she told shocked air traffic controllers that there was a hole in the plane, and “someone went out”.

The ground crew could hardly believe their ears.

In the acres of newspaper articles covering the events of the fateful day we hear how she has faced a constant battle throughout her career to prove herself in a man’s world.

In the past she’s been quoted as saying: “if you’re a woman (or different in any way), you’re high profile; you’re under more scrutiny.”

She would certainly have nothing to prove to the passengers she went back to speak to after she’d safely landed the plane without any further loss of life.

They all had nothing but the utmost respect for this hero pilot with nerves of steel.