‘I'll be very relieved once we land.’
A United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Boston was forced to make an emergency landing after a passenger spotted the plane’s wing ‘coming apart’ mid-flight.
‘Just about to land in Denver with the wing coming apart on the plane,’ Kevin Clarke says in a video shared on social media. ‘Can’t wait for this flight to be over.’
Mr Clarke’s wife Kimberly posted her husband’s video on Facebook, saying they believe the damage was caused by a bird strike.
‘My brother-in-law thinks it might have been a bird strike as the flaps were deployed. He is a pilot,’ she wrote in the comment section.
Another passenger onboard the flight also snapped a picture of the faulty wing and uploaded it to Reddit.
‘Sitting right on the wing and the noise after reaching altitude was much louder than normal. I opened the window to see the wing looking like this,’ user octopus_hug wrote.
‘How panicked should I be? Do I need to tell a flight crew member?
The user said another passenger- possibly Mr Clarke- alerted flight attendants to the problem, which prompted the diversion.
‘I’ll be very relieved once we land,’ they added.
The Boeing 757-200 flight was carrying 165 passengers and landed in Denver around 5:15am local time, where they were put on a different plane and arrived in Boston a few hours later.
Mr Clarke later described the experience to local news station Boston 25 News, telling the outlet: ‘We take off. I heard this loud buzzing noise, and then it faded away, so I didn’t think much of it, and all of a sudden, the pilot is coming back, so I threw my window open, peeked out the window, and the whole leading edge of the wing was destroyed.’
The Federal Aviation Administration said it was investigating the incident.
A spokesperson for United Airlines said: The flight landed safely and we arranged for a different aircraft to take customers to their destination, which arrived in Boston last night.’
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