A female passenger died after she was nearly sucked from the cabin of a Southwest Airlines flight en route from New York to Dallas on Tuesday.

Investigators say there was a fault with the engine's fan blades.

Almost 700 Boeing 737 engines will need to be inspected worldwide over the next 20 days, regulators say.

"Fan blade failure due to cracking... could result in an engine in-flight shutdown, uncontained release of debris, [and] possible airplane decompression," the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said in a statement announcing the inspections.

Read more at BBC News.