Not uncommon...☺
Howard McKenzie, Head of Boeing Engineering
"...I have a dream..."
Stephanie Pope, Boeing's Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
Comments?
Very common. Just like on your car. Probably from a stone chip kicked up by another jet on the ground.
However, it’s not tempered glass. That would shatter into millions of shards. It’s a combination of multiple layers of glass, Polyvinyl Butyrate (PVB) and polycarbonate.
The outer layers are usually glass so they don’t scratch as easily. It’s similar to ballistic glass and designed to allow a certain amount of failure (cracks) before it totally fails. I would think that safety protocol calls for immediate replacement upon discovery, even for minor cracks.
United Airlines flying Boeing aircraft. What could go wrong?
Good thing Meigs airfield was closed down years back. Probably get more than a cracked windshield with all the bullets flying in that area.
I worked in various aspects of aviation for many years. My internship was in airport operations, and part of my job was to respond to and direct the response to aircraft emergencies. Any busy airport has almost daily emergencies for things like “smoke in the cockpit”, “rough running engine” (piston engines), “unsafe gear indication”, etc. Less frequent, and more serious, but still not uncommon are things like hydraulic failures, cracked windscreen, etc. Yet as frequently as these issues occur, 99.99% of the time they come to nothing in the end.
Right now, the media is just spotlighting every common issue and making it seem that there is an accelerating avalanche of problems. All of that said, however, I AM concerned that the combination of DEI and pushing experienced flight crew out over the “vax” mandate WILL start to have a detrimental effect at some point.
Most everything on an airplane flexes. If it didn’t flex, it would break up in no time from the routine stresses. But the flexing inevitably leads to cracking, both in the flexible parts and the so-called “rigid” ones.
Big planes have a web of fine wires embedded between the laminations of the windscreen for windscreen heating. OpSpec for some airlines requires the use of this windscreen heat whenever the plane is in motion in the belief that a warm windshield will be more pliable and less prone to cracking than one that’s ice cold. They wouldn’t be footing the bill for the extra maintenance caused by continuous operation if cracking wasn’t a known hazard.