Recently a United Airlines suffered a cracked windshield in flight and had to divert, but did it really get hit by space debris? Here’s what happened.
There have been a number of high profile incidents involving commercial planes in 2025, beginning with the collision between an American Airlines jet and a U.S. Army helicopter in Washington, DC and the crash of an Air India flight shortly after take-off. Only one person survived the crash in India, while all involved in the DC crash perished. Luckily, another incident in October had a happier ending. United Airlines flight 1093, which was on its way to Los Angeles from Denver, diverted to Salt Lake City for an emergency landing after its windshield cracked mid-flight. Initial reports theorized that the plane may have hit «space debris» — a small meteorite? A piece of a defunct satellite? No one seemed sure.
The Boeing 737 MAX 8 was flying at around 36,000 feet when the damage occurred, with 134 passengers and six crew members on board. After the plane safely landed with no injuries to passengers, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) began its investigation, looking not only at the cracked windshield, but also taking into account weather, radar, and flight recorder data.
Despite early reports, space debris seemed unlikely. A 2023 report from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) found that the odds of an aircraft collision with space debris causing injury to passengers as below a trillion to one.
