A Boeing plane was forced to make an emergency landing in Japan on Saturday after crew members discovered a crack in the cockpit window.
An All Nippon Airways spokesperson said the damage was found on the outermost side of the four-layer window surrounding the cockpit.
The captain turned around and returned to Sapporo/New Chitose Airport. The flight was on its way to Toyama, about an hour and a half away, when the crack was discovered.
Fortunately, no injuries were reported to the 59 passengers and six crew members.
“The cracks did not appear to affect flight controls or pressurization,” the spokesperson said.
This plane is a 737-800, a 737 MAX 9 that made headlines last week after a catastrophic accident involving an Alaska Airlines passenger plane in which a cabin panel was blown off just minutes into flight, miraculously resulting in no fatalities. It wasn't a machine.
The door plug was torn from the plane and it plunged 16,000 feet into the backyard of a schoolteacher's home in Portland, Oregon.
Federal investigators investigating the near-catastrophic fuselage panel explosion are looking into the possibility that hardware meant to keep the plane safe wasn't in place in the first place.
Following the incident, United Airlines reported that it had found loose bolts and “installation issues” on some of its Boeing 737 MAX 9 jetliners.
The National Transportation Safety Board on Friday announced it would require stricter safety inspections and increase oversight of the airline itself, taking all Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes out of service.
The sudden incident comes amid mounting claims of inadequate quality and supplier technical support on the ground, as well as questions about safety at the Spirit AeroSystems factory where 737 MAX planes are manufactured. may provide insight into the manufacturer's employers, the manufacturers said. told the Wall Street Journal.
“At Spirit, we're known to get emotional if we make too much noise or cause too much trouble,” Joshua Dean, a former Spirit quality auditor, told the paper.
“That doesn't mean you ignore things completely, but they don't want you to find everything and write about it.”
All Boeing MAX jets have been grounded for two years after two crashes on Indonesia's Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines in 2018 and 2019 killed 346 people.
with post wire
