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A plane flying from London to Orlando, Florida, last month was forced to turn around because some windows were missing or damaged. Passengers who reported hearing roaring sounds in the cabin were shocked, authorities said.
The plane, an Airbus A321, had four damaged windows, including two that were completely missing, when it took off from London Stansted Airport on October 4, according to a report published last week by the British Air Accidents Investigation Branch.
There were no injuries aboard the flight, which had 11 crew members and nine passengers seated in the middle of the plane, all of whom were employees of a “travel company or the operator of the aircraft,” authorities said.
The names of the companies are not included in the report.
After takeoff, some passengers noted that “the aircraft cabin seemed noisier and colder than they were used to,” the report said. Someone walking to the rear of the plane noticed a loud noise and noticed that a window seal was chattering and that the window appeared to have slid down.
That passenger described the cabin noise to an investigator as “loud enough to damage your hearing,” the report said.
Cabin crew members were notified and after further inspection of the window agreed to return the aircraft to Stansted.
The plane remained normally pressurized during the 36-minute flight, investigators said.
Once the plane landed, crew members found the three other damaged windows.
The report said the plane had been used for ground filming a day before the flight and had outside lights shined on it for more than five hours “to create the illusion of a sunrise,” authorities said.
But the hot lights caused thermal damage and deformation of the windows, authorities said.
The report warned that while the episode had ended “without incident,” a more serious level of damage “could have had more serious consequences, especially if the integrity of the windows were lost at a higher pressure differential.”
In 2018, one person was killed on a Southwest Airlines flight from New York to Dallas when an engine exploded in midair, shattering a window and partially pulling a woman from the plane, causing fatal injuries.
