United Airlines diverts flight after passengers spot chips in wing of plane
- A video taken by one passenger shows a plane wing with a dark blue tip descending onto a runway, and the slat of the wing appeared to have broken off
- The United flight departing from San Francisco and bound for Boston was diverted to Denver. All the passengers were later flown on a different plane to Boston
A United Airlines flight departing from San Francisco and bound for Boston was diverted to Denver after passengers spotted that parts of the plane’s wing were chipped, Boston’s WHDH 7News first reported on Tuesday.
Kevin Clarke, a passenger on the flight, told WHDH that he caught sight of the damaged wing and began recording the incident. Clarke, a 67-year-old ski announcer from Maine, told Associated Press that one of the pilots had walked along the plane’s aisle before announcing that the flight would be redirected to Denver.
Clarke’s video shows a plane wing with a dark blue tip descending onto a runway. The slat of the wing appeared to have broken off, leaving it looking jagged. In another part of the video, several people in orange vests labelled as “tech ops,” appeared to be repairing the wing.
“Can’t wait for this flight to be over,” Clarke can be heard saying in the video.
“I was just going to pray that we made it to the other side of the turbulence,” Clarke told AP.
A user on Reddit posted a photo of what appeared to be the damaged wing on Tuesday. The photo showed a plane wing, mid-air, with part of its slat chipped. The wing looked similar to the one shown in Clarke’s video.
“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. How panicked should I be? Do I need to tell a flight crew member?” the user wrote in the post, which garnered 1,500 upvotes and 485 comments at the time of writing.