It is not uncommon for planes to collide with objects in mid-flight, but in the vast majority of cases they are birds or hail and this occurs at low altitude. This time, the incident seems much more mysterious.
On Thursday, October 16, a United Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 flying from Denver to Los Angeles had to make an emergency landing in Salt Lake City. At an altitude of 10,000 meters, a mysterious object hit the plane’s windshield, shattering the cockpit glass and damaging the pilot’s arm.
More than 25,000 pieces of space junk orbiting Earth
“United Flight 1093 landed safely in Salt Lake City to repair damage to its multi-layered windshield. We have arranged another aircraft to transport customers to Los Angeles later today and our maintenance team is working to return the aircraft to service,” United said.
According to the New York PostThe impact could be due to space debris or even a meteorite. In fact, NASA has identified more than 25,000 pieces of space debris larger than 10 cm in orbit around the Earth, but most of the time, if this debris falls, it disintegrates in the atmosphere. The newspaper recalls that, in a 2023 report, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) estimated the probability of space debris causing serious injuries to a commercial airline passenger at one in a billion.
Source: BFM TV
