Boeing 777 Windshield Shatters!!!!
It was scary enough when passengers learned that their Rome-to-New York flight had what the crew termed a "major" technical problem. Then the Alitalia jet made a U-turn over the ocean and headed back to land, where emergency rescue crews were waiting at the airport in Shannon, Ireland, an hour later.
It wasn't until they got off the plane that they saw the windshield above the captain's seat in the Boeing 777 was shattered, with blankets and pillows from the cabin piled up behind it. "My heart started racing even more than it had been on the plane," said Vinnie Gioia of Mastic, who was returning from a family trip to Sicily when Alitalia Flight 610 made the emergency landing Sunday evening.
Boeing officials say the device that prevents the windshield from fogging up apparently overheated, shattering the inside layer and sparking a fire. The pilots put out the fire in the cockpit with a fire extinguisher, but the inner layer of the acrylic-glass material that makes up the windshield began to splinter, with pieces falling into the cockpit.
It could have been worse. "You make an emergency landing because there is a high risk that the windshield will deteriorate to the point that it fails," said Michael Barr of the aviation safety institute at the University of Southern California. "You don't want to lose pressurization."
If an aircraft at a high altitude -- the Alitalia plane was at 39,000 feet -- loses pressurization, the flight crew is at risk of being sucked out. The Alitalia jet quickly descended to close to 10,000 feet, where pressurization is not an issue.
It's not the first time the windshield on a Boeing 777 has shattered when the heating element malfunctioned. Federal Aviation Administration records show two instances of windshields on the world's largest twinjet shattering in the past year.
On Oct. 26, 2002, the outer glass of the windshield of a United Airlines Boeing 777 shattered while the plane was preparing to land because of electrical arcing in the wiring between the layers of window material. The problem was blamed on moisture getting into an area designed to be watertight. Two months later, on Dec. 26, 2002, another United 777 made an emergency descent when the same thing happened.
"If it's happened three times, they had better fix the problem pretty quickly," Barr said. "That's called blood priority."
The FAA would say only that it was aware of the latest incident. Boeing spokeswoman Elizabeth Verdier said the manufacturer had received a report on the incident from Alitalia. "It isn't real common but it isn't unusual. The heating elements do sometimes overheat," she said.
The material that makes up the windshield is sturdy, designed to handle the impact of bird strikes. But a short in electrical anti-fog device can "cook" the material, Barr said.
The flight carrying about 300 passengers, destined for Kennedy Airport, Sunday afternoon in clear weather. About two hours after takeoff, passengers noticed an electrical smell, and not long after that the flight crew announced a "major" technical problem that had to be addressed immediately.
The flight attendants turned off the overhead monitor that tracks the flight, showing its speed, altitude and location. But Gioia was able to get the seatback monitor in front of him to work, and watched as the aircraft made a U-turn and descended to close to 10,000 feet, where it flew for nearly an hour, he said, after which the plane made an uneventful landing.
"I'm not going to say we said goodbye to each other ... but we held hands," said Gioia, who was traveling with his wife, two sons, ages 4 and 7, and his 7-year-old nephew. After an overnight stay in Ireland, Alitalia put the passengers on another flight to Kennedy on Monday.
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