When members of First Baptist Church in Boerne, (ber-nee) Texas, heard recordings of radio transmissions from a Southwest Airlines pilot who made a harrowing emergency landing this week in Philadelphia, they recognized the voice as one of their own.
Tammie Jo Shults — the pilot who guided Flight 1380 to the ground April 17 after a mid-flight engine failure shot debris through a window, killing one passenger — is a recognizable figure at the Texas Hill Country church, which averages 900 in worship. She has led the children’s worship program at First Baptist and taught Sunday School for children, middle schoolers, high schoolers, and adults.
Staci Thompson, a longtime friend and administrative assistant in the church office told the Baptist Press, “When we heard the voice in media replays of cockpit recordings, it was just like talking on the phone. That’s what she sounds like.”
The church was “impressed” but not “shocked,” Thompson said at reports, “Shults landed the plane safely after a 20,000-foot drop in six minutes, then walked down the aisle hugging passengers. The plane was bound from New York to Dallas, and 7 of the 144 passengers aboard were injured in addition to the 1 fatality.”
But Shults “biggest goal” amid the emergency landing and subsequent media coverage, according to Thompson, “is that she can share her faith and it resonate and awaken people’s eyes to how great a God we have.”
In a blog post, Shults stated that being a pilot gave her “the opportunity to witness for Christ on almost every flight.”