Flight makes emergency landing after windshield cracks
A Juneyao Airlines' flight from Shanghai to southwest China was diverted to land in midway on Saturday night after a cockpit windshield cracked.
The Airbus 320 operating Flight HO1231 made the emergency landing at the Wuhan Tianhe International Airport in central China's Hubei Province at 10:55pm, over three hours after it took off from Shanghai's Hongqiao International Airport.
The windshield on the left behind of the captain's seat suddenly fractured in the air when the passenger aircraft was flying near Wuhan. The crew members made the diverted landing at the nearest airport according to emergency procedure, the Shanghai-based airline said in a statement on Sunday.
All the passengers onboard have been properly accommodated and their itineraries have been rearranged, the private carrier said. No one was injured.
A photo posted by a witness on the internet shows most part of the windshield has been covered with cracks after the landing.
To ensure safety, the aircraft descended sharply from over 10 kilometers high to some four kilometers within several minutes, according to the flying radar.
"It is the best way to descend and make an immediate landing to ensure the safety," a civil aviation expert said on the Weibo microblogging.
A passenger jet's windshield usually has three levels of glass. The structure was mainly supported by the middle and interior glasses. If the cracking was on the exterior glass, it won't have direct a influence on flying safety, the expert said.
A similar incident happened in May 2018, when the cockpit wind shield of a Sichuan Airlines' jetliner Airbus 319 broke and dropped in the air.
The Flight 3U8633 from southwest Chongqing to Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, was later safely diverted to land at the Chengdu airport.