Don't forget that it took BOTH pilots to get the aircraft on the ground safely. In normal operations the pilot monitoring (PM) is the one talking on the radios while the pilot flying (PF) is the one operating the controls. Now in an emergency situation like this, it takes some serious coordination on who is doing what. Now each airline is slightly different with their SOP's. At my airline, most emergencies or abnormalities, the controls and radios are first handed to the first officer (FO), while the captain manages the situation by first getting in the Quick Reference Handbook (QRH) and takes care of the problem. Then they have to coordinate with the flight attendants about the situation of diverting, whether or not there are hurt people, then plan with ATC about diverting. The one emergency where it is the captain doing the flying is actually the emergency decent after a depressurization, in which the captain will take control of the aircraft and ask the FO to declare an emergency with ATC and then reads off the checklist for doing said decent and tells the captain exactly what do to. At a safe altitude, then the FO can take the controls while the captain manages the situation and makes sure everyone is coordinated and all final checklists are complete. Now Southwest might have totally different procedures so we won't know who was flying until the NTSB report is out. It could have very well been the FO that flew the entire time. Or perhaps he was flying while she was managing the last minute checklists and maybe they transferred controls for the landing. Who knows yet? The fact is that it's a team effort.
What's amazing is that this flight had not one but TWO threats at first. They had engine fire indication immediately followed by a rapid decompression. Two immediate threats that have to be dealt with in a certain order. The decompression was obviously the more serious threat at the time because you can't fight a engine fire when you're unconscious. I'm curious to see the transcripts of their thought process when this first happened. Luckily the engine was not on fire and it was just an indication when the thing nearly disintegrated. Once at safe altitude, they still had to secure the dead engine, run the checklists for single engine approaches as they had wing damage. And make sure everything was okay in the cabin. Things weren't so they made sure medics were on hand as well.
What's amazing is that this flight had not one but TWO threats at first. They had engine fire indication immediately followed by a rapid decompression. Two immediate threats that have to be dealt with in a certain order. The decompression was obviously the more serious threat at the time because you can't fight a engine fire when you're unconscious. I'm curious to see the transcripts of their thought process when this first happened. Luckily the engine was not on fire and it was just an indication when the thing nearly disintegrated. Once at safe altitude, they still had to secure the dead engine, run the checklists for single engine approaches as they had wing damage. And make sure everything was okay in the cabin. Things weren't so they made sure medics were on hand as well.
