What hits an airliner in the windscreen at 36,000 feet?
“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.
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. “
Birdstrikes are pretty common at lower altitudes, approaches to, and departures from airfields.
In 1997 I was in a C-141 that experienced a catastrophic windscreen break above 25,000 feet. I’m pretty sure it was the aging windscreen that gave out. By 1997, C-141s were pretty long in the tooth.
36,000 feet in a modern, relatively new airliner doesn’t make sense. Was it space debris? Maybe, but the FAA says that is a very remote chance. More to follow on this one.
