A British Airways plane with 200 passengers on board survived a mid-air scare after being hit with a block of ice that left the windscreen cracked, Times Now reported.
The Boeing 777's two-inch-thick windscreen was completely shattered by the ice block that reportedly fell from another plane flying 1000 feet above them.
The unusual accident occurred when the aircraft was flying at 35,000 feet while cruising on a journey from London Gatwick to San Jose in Costa Rica on Christmas.
Windscreens of the planes are similar to bulletproof glass, which means they can stand tremendous force at high altitudes. But that was not the case in this accident which has been termed as 'one in a million'.
Despite the mid-air crisis, all the 200 passengers were safe but were stranded at an airport for couple of hours after their plane made an emergency landing.
The damaged aircraft couldn't take off immediately and thus the flight was rescheduled 50 hours after the passengers' original scheduled time.
The delay promised by the airlines was 90-minutes initially. But due to the repair works on the plane, the delay turned out to be an extremely long one.
After the incident, British Airways issued an apology to the passengers who had their festive plans ruined.
“We would like to send a heartfelt apology to the customers on this flight, who have had their Christmas plans ruined. We will never fly an aircraft unless we feel it is completely safe to do so, and on this occasion, our engineers were unable to clear it to fly," said a British Airways spokesperson.
“We appreciate the patience and the understanding of our customers and our engineers and crew colleagues who have also done all they can to assist” it added.
A few weeks back, a Boeing 737-800 was struck by a large flock of birds just before landing.
Sparks came out of the engine, however two pilots fortunately managed to land the plane in Italy. The entire windscreen was covered with the carcass of birds.
The plane, Malta Air Boeing 737-800, was flying between London and Bologna on 24 November.
