Cracked Window On Southwest Jet Forced Landing In Cleveland

CLEVELAND, OH — A Southwest Airlines flight carrying 76 people has been forced to make an unplanned landing in Cleveland because of a cracked window in the passenger compartment.

Flight WN957 took off from Chicago Midway and was bound for Newark on Wednesday morning. At some point during the flight, a passenger window cracked (as seen in the pictures) and the plane was forced to make an unplanned landing at Cleveland Hopkins Airport.

No one was hurt during the incident and the aircraft was able to maintain pressurization. "The flight landed uneventfully in Cleveland," a Southwest spokesperson told Patch.

The multiple layers of window panes helped the plane keep its pressurization. "No emergency landing was requested and the flight landed uneventfully with no reported injuries," the spokesperson emphasized.

The aircraft has been taken out of service and is undergoing maintenance review. Southwest's Cleveland employees have been tasked with finding a new flight to Newark for the 76 passengers aboard Flight WN957.

The plane may have been a Boeing 737-700 aircraft.

This unplanned landing comes just weeks after a deadly disaster claimed the life of a Southwest passenger. On April 17, a woman was killed when a 737 jet engine caught fire and a piece of shrapnel pierced a window, partially sucking the woman out of the plane and forcing an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport.

The plane was carrying about 150 passengers and was headed from New York to Dallas. Jim Demetros, a Connecticut man, was on that flight. He said it was "very harrowing experience, for sure." Demetros said when the plane's oxygen masks were deployed, the crew did a great job of keeping passengers calm.

By then attention had already turned to the woman who was partially sucked out of the plan. She was frantically dragged back into the aircraft by a pair of passengers. She was the flight's only fatality, but other passengers suffered minor injuries, writes the Connecticut Post.

The Federal Aviation Administration then ordered an emergency inspection of all engines identical to the one that failed on that Southwest flight.

This is a breaking news story and Patch will update it as more information is available.

Photos used with permission of Twitter user Chaikel