More fear than harm. In mid-flight, at more than 8,500 meters above sea level, a Smartlynx Airlines Malta pilot saw the windshield of his plane break, reports The Aviation Herald, Monday, February 19. Fortunately, the window did not break completely and there were no problems with depressurization.
The plane, a Boeing-designed 737-8 Max, was able to land quietly and safely about 25 minutes later on the runway at Stuggart Airport in Germany. It connected the German city with Istanbul, Türkiye. The plane of Smartlynx Airlines Malta, the Maltese subsidiary of the Latvian company Smartlynx, was flying on behalf of Turkish Airlines, within the framework of the cooperation agreements that airlines usually sign between themselves.
“The crew reported a crack that had developed in one of their windshields,” specifies The Aviation Herald, a site specialized in publishing incident reports in commercial aviation. The plane remained on the ground for approximately five and a half hours in Stuggart, before taking the return flight to Istanbul’s Sabiha Gökçen International Airport.
A frequent incident
Although they may seem worrying, these types of incidents occur regularly. In any case, the multiple reports of broken windshields seem to attest to this.
On February 8, a crack was reported during a flight between Milan and Muscat, in Oman, carried out by a Boeing 787-9 of the Oman Air company. On January 29, a similar incident was reported, this time on an internal flight in Argentina, carried out by a JetSmart Airbus A320-200.
American aircraft manufacturer Boeing has suffered multiple setbacks with its 787 aircraft in recent years. But this new incident seems less worrying than the previous ones that occurred until recently. For example, on January 5, an Alaska Airlines plane lost an in-flight evacuation door. The plane involved was a Boeing 737-9 Max.
Source: BFM TV
