Southwest Flight Makes Emergency Landing After Another Window Breaks

About two weeks after a fatal engine explosion shattered a window on a Southwest flight, another plane from the airline has been grounded for a broken window.

The flight from Chicago, Illinois to Newark, New Jersey had to make an emergency landing in Cleveland, Ohio after it was discovered that a window of the plane had a massive crack in it.

Southwest provided a statement on the alarming situation to Business Insider, saying, “The Crew of Southwest Flight 957, with scheduled service from Chicago-Midway to Newark, made the decision to divert the plane to Cleveland for maintenance review of one of the multiple layers of a window pane.”

“The flight landed uneventfully in Cleveland. 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,” the statement concluded.

A passenger on the flight sent a photo of the window to her son, Twitter user Ryan Holly, who was one of the first to publicly bring attention to the broken window. Holll tweeted out the photo and wrote, “[Southwest] has a serious problem with their fleet. My moms plane just had to divert and land in [Cleveland] cuz of another window crack.”

A passenger who was actually on the plane, Alejandro Aguina, followed up later, tweeting out a photo as well and explaining, “On my way to NJ for work and [Southwest flight 957] gets a window crack. Only outside crack so we’re all safe. On our way to NJ in new plane. Thanks to the [Southwest] crew and pilots for handling it professionally.”

As previously mentioned, the new broken window incident comes just over two weeks since the airline had a window knocked out of one of its planes, which in turned caused a passenger to get partially sucked out. She subsequently died of injuries sustained during the tragic incident.

Marty Martinez, who was also on the previous flight, spoke with reporters and described what happened. “All of a sudden, we heard an explosion and I come to find out that the engine exploded on the left side of the plane. That explosion caused one of the windows to explode in row 17 of the plane, which was just two aisles over from me.”

“I thought I was cataloging the last moments of my existence,” Martinez continued. “It was absolutely terrifying.”

“The plane felt like it was freefalling going down and we were probably going down for 10 or 15 minutes and of course, everyone is freaking out,” Martinez added, saying that even the flight attendants were noticeably shaken. “Everyone is crying. It was the scariest experience.“