A United flight from Denver to Los Angeles diverted to Salt Lake City on Thursday. The airline reported that flight 1093 made the decision to address a crack in one layer of its windshield. But was the plane actually hit by space debris?
That’s one leading theory based on a photo shared by aviation watchdog JonNYC of the cockpit of the United Boeing 737 MAX 8 (registration N17327).
Photo NOT confirmed
Hearing there were scorch-marks, so space-debris or meteorite. pic.twitter.com/ird6QKEZv8
— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) October 17, 2025
The aircraft was carrying 140 passengers and cruising at 36,000 feet. A replacement aircraft took customers to LA, arriving six hours later than planned.
#AirportAlert United Airlines Flight UA1093, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 (N17327), took off from Denver (DEN) headed to LAX just 1hr ago—but now it’s diverting to SLC after a cracked window in the cockpit. Fire Dept is standing by waiting their arrival. #Aviation
Follow Here:… pic.twitter.com/oWtXlPyLKv
— SLCScanner (@SLCScanner) October 16, 2025
As of this writing, the aircraft that diverted remains on the ground in Salt Lake City more than a day later.
On modern airliners the forward windshields are laminated, multi‑ply, electrically heated structures designed to survive a single‑ply failure without loss of pressurization or bird penetration. A crack in one layer is consistent with:
- Windshield heat/connector fault leading to localized overheating, thermal stress, and cracking of a ply. This an leave heat discoloration or “scorchy” marks.
- Benign thermal/structural crack of a ply due to temperature gradients and residual stresses. This is a routine, known in‑service failure. The laminated construction is fail‑safe to continue flight, but procedure would typically involve crew descending to reduce pressure differentials, manage heat, and land at a suitable airport. That descent from 36,000 feet is exactly what you’d expect after a ply crack.
Given the altitude the plane was flying at, bird or hail impact is unlikely. The description of the issue being “one layer of its multilayer windshield” points to a ply crack rather than penetration.
Cracked windshield diversions are pretty common. Here are ones from last year on United, on American and Alaska. A Delta A330‑200 returned to London for a cracked windshield this summer.
So what’s the risk of space debris to aviation? An FAA report from 2023 estimated an annual 0.1% chance that falling space debris would cause a single global aviation casualty. That meant individual passenger risk was less than a trillion‑to‑one though projected to increase.
For space launches and reentry, the FAA now uses Debris Response Areas and Aircraft Hazard Areas to keep aircraft away from debris hazards at one‑in‑a‑million risk.
I haven’t found a single confirmed airliner debris strike on record. I’ve found old discussions noting the absence of any documented cases. It seems like the most likely scenario is windshield heat system arcing causing scorch marks. That doesn’t rule out other possibiltiies, of course.
Gary, be honest, without JonNYC or Reddit, what would you do for such ‘spicy’ content?
I can’t make out scorch marks on the windshield, but the pilot’s arm should looks like it’s been through somethin.
I am waiting for a publication like the National Enquirer to use a headline like “United Airlines flight 1093 from Denver to Los Angeles got splooged and damaged from outer space debris from the planet Uranus.
@Ken A — Facts. 10/10.
Tiny meteor? Seems more likely.
I’m now saying it’s aliens but it is aliens.
Except it’s my understanding that by the time any space debris or meteorite gets to the ground, it’s cold, not hot. The movie version where fireballs hit the ground is just wrong. It heats the air around it for sure (which creates an insulating blanket that actually protects the object to some degree), and the surface ablates, but inside has been exposed to space for however long and is extremely cold, and it just never heats up inside—not in the split second it takes to pass through the upper atmosphere and decelerate to free fall. If it’s big enough to not burn up completely, it will actually be cold when it hits the ground.
36,000 feet is not that high in space debris terms—by that point any debris small enough to only cause the limited damage shown (without punching a giant hole in the plane) has decelerated to free fall velocity and been exposed to very cold high-altitude air for a while. It doesn’t take long for a pebble to cool off.
So no way those scorch marks were from either a meteor or space debris, at least not directly. I guess a small impact could have damaged the heaters or some other electrical part and made them arc as a side effect.
Damn that Joe Biden!
Could it be a MAX production issue .?
Okay so here’s my weird experience on Thursday flying east from GJT (Grand Junction, CO near the Utah border). My 7:30am flight to Denver was held on the ground for almost an hour due to Denver ATC limiting traffic due to a “fog bank”, and then spent some time circling during the flight while getting permission to land – so late that we all missed our connections. That sounded weird to me because the weather forecast was clear and fog = moisture, but Denver and most of Colorado is high desert prairie climate. Still, I thought nothing of it until this article. So I looked up the flight – it pulled back from the gate at 5:51am, which means it was probably over the Rockies around 6:20-6:40am. My point is just that maybe the delay was based on this odd incident, whether it was “alien debris” or something less mysterious but still a mystery.
Hey Gary.. there are a lot more pictures circulating.. send me a note