A United Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing after the plane’s windscreen shattered.
Flight 1093 had taken off from Denver, Colorado, and was headed to Los Angeles, California, when a layer of the cockpit’s main window cracked on Thursday.Â
The plane was about 200 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, Utah, at roughly 36,000 feet in the air, when the crew noticed something strike the windshield, Air Live reported.Â
The Boeing 737 Max 8, carrying 134 customers and six crew members, then diverted to Salt Lake City.
Unverified photos showed what appeared to be cuts on the pilot’s arm as well as shards of glass on the aircraft’s control board.
United Airlines told the Daily Mail in a statement that all travelers were later taken to Los Angeles on another plane.Â
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has launched an investigation into the incident.Â
The board has not determined what caused the multi-layered windshield to sustain such significant damage.
The images from inside the cockpit were not shared by the NTBS, but by AirLive and online users. The Daily Mail is working to independently confirm the information
A United Airlines flight was forced to make a heart-pounding emergency landing after the aircraft’s windscreen shattered (file photo)
Further unverified photos of the aftermath depicted significant damage to the windscreen. It appeared as if something had hit the right corner of the window.Â
These images were shared by AirLive and online users. The Daily Mail is working to independently confirm the information.Â
The pilot allegedly described the object that struck the windshield, which is designed to function safely in case any layer sustains damage, as ‘space matter,’ Air Live reported.
‘Information on this claiming space debris is far from confirmed,’ astrophysicist and science YouTuber Scott Manley wrote on X.Â
‘I expect the NTSB will get a look at the damage and see what FOD traces are left. There is a reddish brown material at the top of the frame which could conceivably be left over from the impact.’
He explained that cockpit windows have three layers – glass on the inside and outside with polymer in the middle – and it appeared as though both glass layers cracked.Â
‘Note that by the time small space debris reaches the flight levels it’s no longer hypersonic and has cooled off,’Â Manley said.Â
Earlier this year, a study found that an average of two discarded rockets re-enter Earth’s atmosphere each week – meaning that around 100 large pieces of space debris fall from the sky annually.Â
Scientists warned that discarded rockets and degraded satellites in orbit have a one-in-four chance of falling back to Earth through busy commercial airspace each year.Â
Researchers from the University of British Columbia found airspaces in the northern US, Europe and around major cities in the Asia-Pacific are most at risk of uncontrolled re-entries.
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Horror on board United flight as pilot’s windscreen CRACKS mid-air triggering emergency landing