Gunfire hits commercial airliner near cockpit as plane taxis before takeoff — and shocked passengers speak out

A bullet hit a Southwest Airlines plane near the cockpit as the flight was taxiing for takeoff at Dallas Love Field on Friday night, KXAS-TV reported.

An airport spokesperson told the station the gunfire forced an evacuation of the flight, and KXAS added that Dallas Police are looking for whoever pulled the trigger.

‘The fact that it hit so very close to the cockpit seems too much of a coincidence.’

Flight 2494 was struck around 8:30 p.m., KXAS said, citing the Federal Aviation Administration, which added that the plane — which was taxiing for takeoff to Indianapolis — returned to the gate where passengers deplaned.

Police told the station they responded to a shooting call around 9:48 p.m., and no one was hurt.

The runway was temporarily closed Friday night while police conducted their investigation, KXAS added.

A Southwest spokesperson told the station the plane was removed from service.

Police said they’re leading the investigation, KXAS reported, adding an FBI airport liaison agent has been assigned to work with police “and other federal partners as deemed necessary.”

‘A rattle outside of the plane’

The station spoke to Shannon and Jamie Lee who were aboard the flight with two of their children; the couple told KXAS everything seemed normal until they heard the pilot on the loudspeaker.

“He said there’s a rattle outside of the plane, and they needed to return back to the gate,” Jamie Lee recalled to the station.

The couple told KXAS the pilot said the plane needed to be checked to determine if it was functional — then added that the front of the plane was damaged, and everyone would have to deplane.

The Lees told the station everyone was calm.

“We had no idea that something happened,” Shannon Lee told KXAS. “We thought Southwest had missed something in an inspection or something, you know … a normal mechanical issue.”

The couple and their two sons didn’t find out about the gunfire until they landed in Indianapolis around 2:30 a.m. and encountered a news crew, the station station said.

“I had my son with me. He was sitting in the window seat. … And we were just in row 13. So, we were pretty close to the cockpit,” Shannon Lee added to KXAS.

While the Lees told the station they’re grateful for the way Southwest handled the initial sharing of information with passengers, they believe they should have been told what happened before getting on another flight.

“I was surprised that they had shut the runway, not really knowing if there were potentially other shots being fired or where the shot could have even come from,” Jamie Lee told KXAS.

Had they known the plane was shot at, the couple told the station they likely would have gone home that night and delayed their flight another day — or flown out of DFW International Airport instead.

“You have to give people a choice, whether they want to put their safety at risk a second time in one night,” Shannon Lee told KXAS.

The Lees added to the station that they want to find out what investigators uncover and what safety improvements may result before walking away from one of their favorite airports and airlines.

“We fly quite a bit … and … our kids fly on their own,” Shannon Lee told KXAS. “So, it is concerning.”

The station said Southwest sent the Lees an email apology as well as a voucher toward a future flight.

‘Holy cow’

Armen Kurdian — a retired Navy captain and Naval flight officer — told KXAS his “first thought is like, ‘Holy cow, somebody just shot a gun, and it hit a commercial aircraft!”

Kurdian added to the station that investigators will start by figuring out where the bullet came from: “So, what was the orientation of the aircraft when it was actually hit? How deep did the bullet penetrate? That’ll tell you what its speed was. And that’ll give you an idea of the range from which it was fired.”

Kurdian added to KXAS they’ll also be looking into whether or not the shot was intentional: “The fact that it hit so very close to the cockpit seems too much of a coincidence. The odds of that happening, I think, got to be really, really high.”

He also told the station that the damage could be wide-ranging — from something small like an inoperative light switch to something bigger, such as the GPS system not working.

“Now, if [the bullet] hits something more vital, say like a hydraulic system, then the pilots would be alerted rather quickly that there would be … a pressure drop in the hydraulic system,” Kurdian added to KXAS.

He noted to the station that such airliners have a lot of backup systems, and it’s likely a bullet to the cockpit would not have caused a crash — but the whole ordeal presents a security vulnerability.

“Did this put an idea into, say, a non-state or a state actor as, ‘Oh, maybe this is something we can do to disrupt air travel’?” Kurdian wondered to KXAS.

He added to the station that it would be wise for the airport and other agencies to look into safety measures.

“So, does it mean random sweeps outside of the airport while flight operations are going on?” Kurdian asked the KXAS. “Does it mean that there [are] going to be more physical barricades or basically physical barriers — not just fences but things that you actually can’t see through, concrete — around the airport?”

You can view a video report here about the incident.

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