tammie jo shults

That flight, as it turned out, wouldn’t be routine. In the cockpit, it felt like another plane had hit them on the left. “That headlong rush to that cliff of ‘Her voice has the same cool, measured cadence from the recording.After the flight, there were investigations by the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board. Then, her senior year of college, she met a female pilot in the Air Force. Staci Thompson, a longtime friend of Shults’ from her church in Boerne, told reporters the pilot has always had “a very soft spirit.” Even wild animals would approach her, unafraid. © Copyright 2020 Military.com. Her persistence paved the way for countless pilots to follow, and against all odds her composure saved the lives of 148 people on that Southwest flight. There was also a cockpit alarm blaring, warning them about the loss of oxygen.In that moment, time slowed down for Captain Shults. The trip was supposed to take about three and a half hours. In 1994, after serving her country honorably for eight years, Tammie Jo left the Navy and joined Southwest Airlines in the early 1990's. “But part of it’s missing.”A pause stretched on for several seconds. In Nerves of Steel, she reminds us that life's challenges and the choices we make equip us to face anything with confidence and that we don't face them alone. In the late ’80s, she started dating a fellow Navy pilot named Dean Shults. At first it seemed like the thousands of other flights Shults had flown in her 30-plus years as a pilot.About 20 minutes in, though, as they climbed past 32,000 feet somewhere over Eastern Pennsylvania, there was a sudden, life-changing explosion. So, like he’d done so many other times, Dean switched their schedules to make sure she could get back in time. Same with the Army and Navy. It wasn’t. She read books about legendary female aviators like Beryl Markham and Amelia Earhart.

Mostly, she tried to put those things out of her mind. Tammie Jo is, however, more than a hero: she is a role model to young and old, in her community and across the country. But after a few years she was certified to pilot an array of Navy jets. It gives insight not only into that day, but into the events in her life that, in a way, prepared her to play her role and save the lives of so many.Flight 1380 touched down at the Philadelphia airport 20 minutes after the explosion. She’d always been a pioneer in her field, but there were never many interviews until flight 1380. To learn more about Women in Aviation and their work, please click on the link below.ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent and bestselling author, The Long Road HomePresident and CEO, Samaritan's Purse and Billy Graham Evangelistic Associationholds a split degree in PreMed and Agribusiness from MidAmerica Nazarene.Although her chapter as a commercial pilot is soon coming to a close, Captain Shults will continue to fly privately, serve as a volunteer pilot, and assume the role, alongside her husband, Dean, as board members of the nonprofit organization, Angel Flight South Central.In 2020, Captain Shults committed herself to joining a network of pilots dedicated to volunteering for the nonprofit organization, Angel Flight.

This riveting story profiles a remarkable lady with a sure destination and nerves of steel.

They’d known how special Shults was for years.

!” wrote one passenger on Instagram.On the ground, the EMT who would take Shults’s pulse and do an EKG—as standard procedure required—was amazed: She didn’t even have an elevated heart rate.Before her career at Southwest, Shults was a naval aviator—one of the first women in the U.S. Navy who got to fly an F/A-18 Hornet.Many attributed her “nerves of steel” to the training she got in the military. More than that, Tammie Jo is a hero of faith. She and Dean dealt with life’s troubles: health issues, work stress, all the ups and downs of parenting. The Dallas-based company has famously embraced a Texan vibe at every turn, creating a company culture that seems to embody the word Now Southwest flies more passengers domestically than any other airline, and the ethos hasn’t changed much. Tammie Jo Shults. The type who, wherever she was in the world, no matter what she was doing, would stop for a calm moment of quiet prayer every morning.Not that she was always composed. Captain Tammie Jo Shults wasn’t supposed to fly that plane that day. The plane slowed as it approached, but at 700 feet in the air it was still going nearly 200 miles per hour—much faster than the 160 mph on a usual landing. This sort of thing would become a theme throughout her career. But her husband, Dean, a fellow Southwest Airlines pilot, knew their son had a track meet at the end of the week and Tammie Jo coached him in the throwing events. ''Most people know Tammie Jo Shults from her landing of Southwest Airlines Flight 1380. Tammie Jo Shults was one of the first female fighter pilots in the Navy.