Southwest cancels flights out of Daytona Beach

More than a hundred Southwest jets were sitting on the tarmac nationwide on Monday.

Flights had been canceled after a woman was killed when an exploding engine sucked her halfway out of her seat last week.

Chuck Horning, head of aviation maintenance science at Embry-Riddle University says these type of engines have been reliable.

“It's not normal for, especially a catastrophic failure, to occur on one of these engines because they are very reliable,” Horning said.

Southwest is using special ultrasonic equipment to inspect fan blades for microscopic cracks.

“It has a little TV screen on it, and it shows you an indication that there is that failure inside the material itself,” Horning explained.

Along with these inspection tools, experts say the engines also have internal sensors, letting the pilots and crew know when there's a problem. Horning says post-flight engine inspections usually take less than ten minutes.

“It's not something that's very long. Not at all,” Horning said, “you're just looking for obvious damage that's on the engine.”

He says that's enough though, and he says southwest is doing the right thing.

“Personally, I wouldn't worry about it,” he said, “it happens so infrequently that I, personally, wouldn't be concerned about it, no.”