United Airlines plane forced to land due to a cracked windshield

A crack found in the windshield made the flight take a diverson to Denver

A United Airlines jet was forced to make a diversion to Denver mid-flight due to a cracked windshield.

The plane was on its way to Washington DC on Sunday when it was forced to make a detour to Denver due to a crack in the windshield, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement to The Independent.

The flight departed from Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas and was supposed to arrive at the Dulles International Airport before it was diverted to the Denver International Airport in Colorado, the FAA said

The United Airlines Flight 1627  landed safely at around 1.10pm local time, the organisation added.

A spokesperson for United Airlines told The Independent that the plane was diverted due to a “maintenance issue”.

“After safely landing, customers deplaned normally and a plane change occurred. The flight departed Denver around 3 p.m. MT to Dulles,” the airline said.

The aircraft had 166 passengers and seven crewmembers, who then boarded a Boeing 737-900 to Dulles, United Airlines said.

The FAA also added to the outlet that "cracks happen across all airplane models", and usually, when they occur, they happen in the "glass pane on the outside, which serves as a protective covering for the inner structural portion."

They also said that the windshield is comprised of multiple layers of tempered glass and other materials.

The diverted plane was a United Airlines Boeing 737-800 - different to the Boeing 737 Max 9 model, which made headlines recently after one of the planes, used for an Alaska Airlines flight, had a door plug blowout mid-flight.

The terrifying incident occurred on 5 January on flight 1282, which departed from Portland, Oregon, on its way to Ontario, California, when minutes into the flight, a door plug blew off the plane, leaving a gaping hole.

The aircraft was around 16,000 feet in the air when the plug blew out; while no one was seriously injured, passengers on the aircraft have now filed a lawsuit against Boeing after feeling “shocked, terrorized and confused” on the nightmare flight, the court filings say.

Days before this incident, another shocking aircraft situation occurred in Japan when a Japan Airlines flight crashed with a smaller Japan Coast Guard Aircraft, leaving five people dead.

While all 379 people onboard the passenger jet managed to evacuate as it was engulfed in flames, five out of the six Coast Guard crew were killed on 2 January as it was preparing to take off.

A mere two weeks after this, two planes collided again on a runway in Japan at New Chitose Airport; no injuries were reported.

Back in the US, six people were injured after an American Airlines flight had to make a hard landing in Hawaii on Saturday.