A United Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing on October 16 after a strange incident occurred with the aircraft windshield.
While the aircraft was at cruising altitude over Utah, part of the Boeing 737 Max 8’s windshield shattered. The plane was operating flight 1093 from Denver to Los Angeles on Thursday with 134 customers and six crewmembers on board, according to the airline.
Over southern Utah, about halfway through the nearly three-hour flight plan, the pilot requested to divert to nearby Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC), according to FlightAware data.
United said the plane “landed safely in Salt Lake City to address damage to its multilayered windshield. We arranged for another aircraft to take customers to Los Angeles later that day and our maintenance team is working to return the aircraft to service.”
Aircraft windshields are designed with many layers of glass, so they can continue to function safely if any layer sustains damage in flight.
Although the airline didn’t say what caused the windshield to shatter, aviation geeks were speculating on social media that an object potentially struck the glass in the sky. However, those are just theories at this point. Unconfirmed photos on social media also reportedly showed a pilot’s arm with scratch marks similar to those caused by shattered glass.
Officials are investigating the cause of the incident, with the NTSB confirming it is “gathering radar, weather, flight recorder data,” according to a statement on X. “Windscreen being sent to NTSB laboratories for examination,” the agency explained.
Once its investigation is complete, the NTSB should issue a report on the matter and clear up what caused the windshield to suddenly break.
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