Airliner hit by possible space debris
41 comments
·October 19, 2025bronco21016
fragmede
Interesting, that link says it might just be hail.
krisoft
> Apparently only one layer of the windshield was damaged
How does that square with the picture of the pilot’s arm with tiny cuts? Did the space debris only damage the internal layer? Something is not adding up to me here.
gnarlouse
Maybe the outermost layers just transferred the energy to the innermost, which exploded tiny shards of glass? In general though, I agree, weird.
Jalad
And in tank warfare this is called spalling
A projectile hits the armor and doesn't penetrate it, but the armor inside still fragments and injured the operators
Aloisius
There's pictures of glass spall in the cockpit and it's not unusual for ballistics glass to spall when hit by a projectile.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatLookedExpensive/comments/1oalnx...
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JBiserkov
Speculation-free facts: https://avherald.com/h?article=52e80701
https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/UAL1093/history/2025...
gpm
Interesting that there's been a bird strike at that altitude before (per the comments in avherald). I didn't know birds flew that high.
ChrisMarshallNY
I can't remember the species, but there's a bird that files crazy high. I think it's a vulture.
marcosdumay
Yes, vultures can fly crazy high, and do a lot of damage to aircraft.
They are a well-known nemesis of military planes, that fly faster and don't have redundancy to survive a hit.
hughes
There should be small pieces of whatever they hit embedded in the body & glass of the aircraft. As long as they are analyzed, the cause of this won't remain a mystery forever.
Reason077
My first thought was that this is more likely to be a spontaneous failure of the windshield glass under pressure, due to manufacturing flaw or improper maintenance. Things like that have certainly happened before. But then again, it seems weird that glass fragments would be projected inward in that scenario.
rootusrootus
There are pictures of the outside where you can clearly see impact damage to the top of the window frame.
WalterBright
> it seems weird that glass fragments would be projected inward in that scenario
At speed, I don't know what the outside pressure on the windshield would be, but I'd be surprised if it was lower than the cabin air pressure.
After all, it is called a wind "shield".
SoftTalker
Don't worry, if it can be blamed on Boeing, it will be.
hsbauauvhabzb
Not unless you want to be spontaneously hit by a falling meteorite yourself in some kind of freak accident / suicide scenario.
shrx
Unless it was hail.
sipofwater
"Something from “space” may have just struck a United Airlines flight over Utah" "“NTSB gathering radar, weather, flight recorder data.”": https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/something-from-space-m... (arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/something-from-space-may-have-just-struck-a-united-airlines-flight-over-utah/)
jbverschoor
Out of all planes, it had to be the 737 max
rawling
Some earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45633191
appreciatorBus
ATC Audio here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRM5zgE13_s
EDIT: looks like the audio starts when they are already arriving at SLC
ecommerceguy
Wasn't there a significant Starlink deorbiting recently?
ErikCorry
Classic Azimov plot line
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There are some other pictures circulating showing the exterior of the aircraft. It definitely appears something hit the aircraft. There is a skid mark on the frame around the window.[1]
Will be interesting to read if an investigative report is made public.
[1]https://viewfromthewing.com/new-cockpit-photos-may-show-what...