American Airlines 777 Cockpit Windshield Shatters Over The Atlantic, Forcing JFK Diversion

On Tuesday night, American Airlines flight 784 from Charlotte to Munich diverted to New York JFK after the first officer’s cockpit windshiled shattered over the Atlantic. The Boeing 777-200 (N776AN) turned around.

A784 Divert over NAT
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u/Ok_Counter_606 in
flightradar24

The 273-seat aircraft left Charlotte 43 minutes late at 8:58 p.m. It flew out over the Pond and the co-pilot’s windshield shattered. A crewmember’s photo of what that looked like is now circulating.

Fortunately, American Airlines was able to get passengers on their way despite the diversion. Another Boeing 777 (N786AN) departed for Munich at 2:48 a.m. and landed 7 hours and 26 minutes later. In total, with all of the extra flying and the time on the ground in New York, passengers made it less than 8 hours late. (Since this was a U.S. carrier flying to Europe rather than from Europe, no EU162 compensation is due.)

Comment
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u/Ok_Counter_606 from discussion

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flightradar24

We’ll have to wait to learn what happened, but the most likely cause seems like a heated flightdeck windshield failure (a heat controller or terminal fault; overheating, arcing, or moisture intrusion into the heat circuit; or thermal stress that cracked one ply of the laminated windshield).

That’s something that can certainly occur. We’ve seen loose electrical connections on the heating elements of cockpit windows which lead to smoke, fire or cracking of the inner layer. Many years ago there was an airworthiness directive over lower windshield terminal issues and American found solder-joint damage inside windshield terminal blocks as a cause of flight deck window heat, smoke, and odor events.

I’ve written about an American Airlines 777 diverting over a cracked windshield before. That flight was a departure from Europe with greater ‘duty of care’ obligations and on the ground in Gander everyone got pizza.

American Airlines New York JFK

Meanwhile, cracked cockpit windshields took on broader significance with United recently when what was initially believed to be space debris impacting the aircraft turned out to be a balloon.

Fortunately, cockpit windshields are multi-ply structures designed to withstand a crack like this – it looks dramatic but there’s no actual penetration or loss of pressurization.