Southwest jet makes emergency stop in Cleveland with window crack

CLEVELAND, Ohio: A New Jersey-bound Southwest Airlines Co flight made an emergency landing in Cleveland on Wednesday (May 2) after a window pane cracked in flight, airline officials and the US Federal Aviation Administration said.

No one was injured in the incident, which came two weeks after an engine on a Southwest 737 ripped apart in flight and shattered a window, killing a female passenger in the first US airline passenger fatality since 2009.

The cause of Wednesday's crack in one of the window's multiple panes was not immediately known.

@SouthwestAir #WN957 diverts and makes emergency landing in CLE due to busted window pic.twitter.com/OJMZ5KTyMS

— Chaikel (@ChaikelK) May 2, 2018

The flight, Southwest 957, was traveling to Newark Liberty International Airport from Chicago Midway International Airport with 76 passengers on board. The crew diverted the Boeing Co 737-700 to Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport at about 11am EDT (1500 GMT) to inspect a layer of a window pane, said Southwest spokesman Brian Parrish.

"The aircraft has been taken out of service for maintenance review," Parrish said.

FAA spokesman Tony Molinaro, who said no one was hurt, said the organisation was investigating the incident.

The FAA on Tuesday ordered additional inspections of fan blades in hundreds of additional engines similar to the one that failed in the deadly Southwest accident on Apr 17.

Southwest has said it planned to complete ultrasonic inspections on all fan blades on the some 700 planes in its fleet with the CFM56-7B engines, the model involved in last month's blowout, over the next two weeks, meeting the FAA's August deadline by mid-May. The CFM engine is made by a joint venture of General Electric Co and France's Safran.

Southwest said it has not found any cracks on fan blades inspected since the accident.