Max-8 Windshield Impacted

[Matt Harper]

Somewhat bizarre incident on Thursday last. A United Boeing 737 Max-8 flying from Denver CO to LAX had a windshield panel smashed by a foreign object - while in the cruise at 36,000 ft. Flight crew was injured by glass shards.

What the foreign object was, is still the subject of some speculation/debate.

[RacingStripes]

Scott Manley has done a video on it as some speculated that it was a satalite. Most likely not, a most probable guess is a weather balloon.

Edited by RacingStripes on Tuesday 21st October 00:44

[Simpo Two]

Looks like windshields should have an internal layer of plastic to stop that.

[sherman]

You do get migrating large birds like swans or geese at that altitude but Im not seeing any blood or feathers.

[normalbloke]

Simpo Two said:

Looks like windshields should have an internal layer of plastic to stop that.

It’s called spalling.

[normalbloke]

sherman said:

You do get migrating large birds like swans or geese at that altitude but Im not seeing any blood or feathers.

Very,very,very rarely,

[sherman]

normalbloke said:

sherman said:

You do get migrating large birds like swans or geese at that altitude but Im not seeing any blood or feathers.

Very,very,very rarely,

About as rarely as a plane hitting an object at 36000ft

[Richard-D]

Simpo Two said:

Looks like windshields should have an internal layer of plastic to stop that.

They're usually 3 layers, hard(ish) outer and inner with a rubberised middle layer. I don't know specifically for a 737, but can't see why it would be different.

Not a bird strike as others have said, I've dealt with a few and they're very messy.

[ChocolateFrog]

Birds explode at 100mph let alone 600.