Passengers captured horrifying footage of a Boeing 737 wing disintegrating mid-flight, necessitating an emergency landing.
A United Airlines passenger traveling from San Francisco to Boston captured shocking video of a Boeing 757 wing disintegrating mid-flight.
“We’re just about to land in Denver with the wing coming apart on the plane,” Kevin Clarke can be heard saying in the clip posted by his wife. “[We’ll] touch down any second, and the nightmare will be over.”
Clarke reported that the wing began coming apart as soon as they departed San Francisco. He described the moment of realization to WCVB. "Wheels up, and I hear this incredible loud vibration like I've never heard," he recalled. "It was like, what was that?"
The video shows the wing almost splintering as the plane comes in for a landing. As the jet taxis to the terminal, more and more detritus is shed from the wing.
Another passenger posted a photo of the wing to the United Airlines sub-Reddit earlier on in the flight as the plane cruised high in the air. You can see from this photo the wing is still mostly intact.
"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,” the passenger wrote. “How panicked should I be?” they asked fellow Redditors. “Do I need to tell a flight crew member?”
"What we're seeing there is the trailing edge of that slat where the damage was done,” Colonel Steve Ganyard told WCVB. He explained that that regulates the airplane’s flight, helping it fly more slowly and comfortably. "Any damage to the leading edge of a wing is bad because that wing no longer functions the way it was designed to," he explained.
"If the damage had been more to the front part, it could have affected the controllability of the airplane," Ganyard continued. "Luckily, in this case it was in the rear and it really didn't have much effect on how the airplane handled."
After the emergency landing was executed in Denver, all 165 passengers were promptly shuttled onto another flight which continued to Boston. Blessedly, the wings of that jet remained intact.
This is just another hard hit for Boeing, which has weathered disastrous press and more than its share of terrifying mid-flight mechanical issues since the beginning of this year. There was the Alaska Airlines flight which had one of its doors suctioned off during flight because of loose bolts from improper construction.
After that ordeal, United announced they also had diagnosed a number of mechanical issues with their 737 jets, much like the one whose wing disintegrated. Just a few weeks ago, Boeing revealed they found incorrectly drilled holes in many of its 737 aircrafts.
