Cracked window forces US passenger jet diversion
In this file photo taken on December 10, 2017, shows a Southwest Airline pilot as he checks his plane from the cockpit window at a gate at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, DC.
A cracked window forced a Southwest Airlines passenger jet bound from Chicago to Newark to divert on Wednesday, two weeks after a midair engine explosion shattered a window on another of the company's Boeing 737s.
The airline told AFP that the crew diverted the plane to Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport for "maintenance review of one of the multiple layers of a window pane" and that the flight landed "uneventfully."
"The aircraft has been taken out of service for maintenance review, and our local Cleveland employees are working diligently to accommodate the 76 customers on a new aircraft to Newark," it said in a statement.
Flight 957 "maintained pressurization" as there are multiple layers of panes in each window, the airline said.
Pictures posted to social media appeared to show a lengthy crack in one of the passenger windows on the jet.
The Boeing 737-700 took off from Chicago Midway International Airport at 8:53am (1353 GMT) and landed in Cleveland at 10:46am, according to the FlightAware website.
On April 17, a mid-air engine explosion on Southwest Flight 1380, another Boeing 737-700 from New York to Dallas, saw flying shrapnel shatter a window, partially sucking a 43-year-old banking executive out of the plane. The woman later died.
President Donald Trump met the crew and passengers at the White House on Tuesday, praising the "incredible job" Captain Tammie Jo Shults did in landing the plane safely in Philadelphia with 149 people on board.
The Federal Aviation Administration has ordered emergency inspections of jet engines like the one that ruptured during the Southwest Airlines flight.
