There were no reports of injuries after Flight 957 landed safely on Wednesday morning.
CLEVELAND — A Southwest Airlines plane flying from Chicago to New Jersey has been forced to land in Cleveland after one of its windows cracked.
There were no reports of injuries after Flight 957 landed safely on Wednesday morning.
The Dallas-based airline says the plane diverted to Cleveland for a maintenance review after the issue on one of the multiple layers of the window pane. Photos taken by passengers showed one window with a large, jagged crack.
Breaking News: @mickychinn just sent me this picture of (another!)blown out outer-window on his @SouthwestAir Flight 957 from Midway to Newark. Plane just emergency-landed into Cleveland. #Southwest, what is going on? Everyone seems safe and unhurt. Kudos to the pilots and staff! pic.twitter.com/dszdee3NBU
More photos of the blown out window from Southwest Flight 957 from Midway to Newark this morning. Photos from @mickychinn. pic.twitter.com/EWj01juDQW
Southwest didn’t immediately release details on how the window was damaged.
Southwest spokeswoman Brandy King said the plane never lost cabin pressure — that would have triggered oxygen masks to drop down for passengers — and that the pilots did not declare an emergency before landing.
King said there were no other mechanical problems with the plane, which was taken out of service. The airline was trying to make arrangements to get the 76 passengers to Newark on another plane.
The timing of the incident could hardly be worse for the nation’s fourth-biggest airline.
Two weeks ago, Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 flying from New York to Dallas made an emergency landing in Philadelphia after an engine blowout damaged their plane’s fuselage and killed a passenger who was partially sucked out a window.
About 20 minutes into that flight — at 30,000 feet — passengers heard a bang and felt a bump as a fan blade broke off in the engine, causing it to explode. Shrapnel spewed across the fuselage and broke a window, causing a drastic drop in pressure.
The drop in pressure caused Jennifer Riordan, a mother of two from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to be sucked halfway out of the plane, requiring two passengers to pull her back on board. Riordan died shortly after of blunt impact trauma to her head, neck and torso.
Riordan, a vice president of community relations for Wells Fargo bank and graduate of the University of New Mexico, was the first passenger death on a U. S. airline since 2009— and the first ever in Southwest Airlines’ history.
A link has been posted to your Facebook feed.
