Boston-To-Chicago Plane Makes Emergency Landing

November 21, 2010

WBUR Newsroom

Cracked windshield in the cockpit of United Flight 881 (Andrew Phelps/WBUR)

A Boston-to-Chicago flight was forced to make an emergency landing in Buffalo Sunday morning because of a cracked windshield.

WBUR's Andrew Phelps was one of 176 passengers on United Flight 881 and said the pilot made an announcement that one of the heating elements in the cockpit windshield failed, causing the large crack.

"The pilot said they discovered a crack," Phelps said from Buffalo. "I got to take a look at it afterward while we were all disembarking and it was a lot more than a crack. It was one-third of the windshield shattered."

The flight landed safely in Buffalo. United Airlines is making arrangements for another flight to Chicago.

This is the second airliner in three days to make an emergency landing because of a cracked windshield. On Friday, a Delta flight from Atlanta to Santa Ana, Calif., was forced to land in Dallas.

More:

@andrewphelps tweets on the emergency landing

This program aired on November 21, 2010. The audio for this program is not available.