Did space debris or some other unidentified object hit a United Airlines Boeing 737MAX as it was flying at 36,000 feet over Utah on Thursday? That’s exactly the question that federal investigators are urgently trying to answer after the Captain was left injured and splattered in blood after whatever collided with the plane badly damaged the windscreen.
The terrifying incident occurred during United flight UA-1093 from Denver to Los Angeles on October 16 and resulted in an emergency diversion to Salt Lake City, where the understandably shaken pilots were seen by emergency medical responders.
While rare, it’s not unheard of for cockpit windscreens to shatter at high altitude, although the circumstances surrounding what happened in this case have left the aviation community scratching its heads.
Airline insider xJonNYC, who has developed a cult following on social media platforms like X and Bluesky, was the first to share details of how United flight 1093 might have been caught up in something extraterrestrial.
“I’m hearing a pretty unusual reason for this windshield crack,” xJonNYC wrote in a now viral post. “Hearing there were scorch-marks, so space-debris or meteorite,” he wrote in another post.
Photos shared on X showed the extent of the serious damage sustained to the windscreen of the two-year-old aircraft, with a large chunk of the windscreen missing from the top corner of one of the front windows in the cockpit.
Whatever hit the windscreen did so with such force that the glass smashed into the cockpit, lacerating the Captain’s arm and leaving him splattered in blood. There are reports that the Captain saw something flying towards the cockpit just before the collision.
What that object is remains a mystery, although it came from a higher altitude than the aircraft, so speculation has surrounded the possibility of space debris like parts from a falling satellite, or even an extremely high altitude weather balloon.
Damage to the cockpit windscreen normally occurs as a result of hailstones or even birds, although these incidents happen at a much lower altitude. In some cases, windscreens can crack due to incorrect installation, although the damage to the front of the window would suggest this wasn’t the case in this incident.
Although the damage looks incredibly serious, the integrity of the windscreen was maintained, and the pilots were able to get the plane on the ground safely in Salt Lake City after first descending to 26,000 feet and then landing around 50 minutes after the collision first occurred.
In 2018, the cockpit windscreen on the First Officer’s side of a Sichuan Airlines Airbus A319 was completely blown out as the plane was at a cruising altitude of 31,000 feet.
Miraculously, neither of the pilots was seriously injured, and they were able to quickly get the plane down to 8,000 feet before making an emergency landing in Chengdu, China.
A typical cockpit windscreen is made up of three to four different layers. The Boeing 737MAX has an outer and inner glass layer, and then a vinyl interlayer, which is meant to hold the glass together should either of the other two layers shatter.
In November 2024, the cockpit windscreen of a Boeing 737MAX operated by Canadian budget carrier Flair Airlines was completely penetrated in a serious bird strike shortly after takeoff from Toronto Pearson Airport.
In 1990, a British Airways Captain was partially sucked out of the cockpit when an improperly installed windscreen panel separated from the aircraft. The First Officer and flight attendants had to hold onto Captain Timothy Lancaster’s belt and ankles to stop him from being completely dragged outside the aircraft.
According to some reports, the crew feared Lancaster was dead but continued to hold onto him because they feared he would be sucked into the engine and endanger the aircraft even further.
Miraculously, Lancaster survived and suffered several fractures, including to his right arm, as well as frostbite.
