Don't know if it was because it emergency landed in my hometown or not but tonight the news said AA had been warned in 2004 to replace all cockpit window glasses just for exactly what happened below and they chose not to. This very well could have been one in the drink with no survivors. Absolutely unexcuseable AA.
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Students prayed as damaged airliner headed to PBIA
By Eliot Kleinberg
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 31, 2008
PDF: NTSB's September 2007 letter about overheating windshield heaters.
PDF: FAA's November 2007 response.
Previous incidents in which windshield heaters overheated:
Jan. 21, 2004: A windshield overheated as an Air Greenland plane was preparing to depart Copenhagen, Denmark.
Jan. 25, 2004: American Airlines flight 1477 declared an emergency on departure from the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport because of smoke and fire near the windshield heat terminal. The airplane returned to DFW and landed safely.
May 2, 2004: American Airlines flight 2107 from Miami to Caracas, Venezuela, suffered a fire near the windshield heat terminal.
April 23, 2006, American Airlines flight 923 diverted to John F. Kennedy International Airport because of smoke in the cockpit. American Airlines' inspection of the windshield revealed a short in the windshield heat terminal block.
SOURCE: National Transportation Safety Board
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For more than an hour Wednesday night, college students prayed, a lawyer wrote goodbye notes to his family and pilots guided a giant airplane, its windshield smoking and the odor of burning plastic wafting through the cabin, through the night over the Atlantic Ocean.
Pilots dropped the plane's altitude to reduce the pressure on the weakened cockpit windshield.
Even as American Airlines Flight 1738 headed in to Palm Beach International Airport, the inner pane of the double-paned right windshield cracked, spraying the co-pilot with glass.
But the 139 passengers and a crew of seven aboard the diverted San Juan-to-Philadelphia flight escaped serious injury. Six people suffered minor injuries. By Thursday morning, passengers were back home.
Safely back in his Philadelphia-area office Thursday afternoon, passenger Paul Null II, who penned the notes to his family, said the flight crew "did a great job" keeping passengers calm. He said his biggest jolt came as he left the plane and saw the shattered cockpit glass.
"The entire thing was just spiderwebbed. It's a good thing on their part they didn't tell us." Federal safety investigators said Thursday the cause might be a windshield heater problem so serious they called on agencies and airlines in September to fix it.
"While we do not yet know the cause of this incident," National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Peter C. Knudson said Thursday, "we have seen these types of incidents before and they have all pointed to this heater block." American Airlines spokeswoman Mary Frances Fagan said the device, similar to a car's rear-window defroster, broke down after a unusually strong arc of electricity caused it to smoke and shattered the tempered glass windscreen.
The NTSB wrote the Federal Aviation Administration in September, citing five incidents - three in 2004 and two in 2006 - in which windshields overheated, causing smoke and, in some cases, fire.
The letter said Boeing had discovered a flaw in the windshields in 2004 and was placing a new design in new planes. In the summer of 2006, Boeing sent service bulletins to owners of most existing models, including the 757, the model in Wednesday's incident. The NTSB also said the FAA agreed to issue bulletins requiring replacements but had not yet done so. The FAA told the safety board in November it would "propose an airworthiness directive" some time this year.
Flight 1738 left Puerto Rico at 5:40 p.m. Wednesday.
Null, 32, who runs a support company for law firms, was returning from a seminar and was watching an in-flight movie.
About two hours in, as people dozed, "everybody starting smelling something like burning plastic or burned popcorn," Null said He said flight attendants stopped the film and began checking overhead bins and galleys, searching for the source, and the odor eventually dissipated.
"A little after that, they came on the PA and said we need to make an emergency landing because there's smoke in the cockpit." Twenty four students and two faculty members from Messiah College, a 3,000-student Christian school near Harrisburg, Pa., were returning from three weeks of studying in the Caribbean.
"Students were all seated close together near the back of the plane. They did hold hands and prayed out loud," school spokeswoman Beth Lorow said Thursday.
The tower at PBIA alerted Fire-Rescue about 8:40 p.m., Palm Beach County Fire-Rescue spokesman Capt. Don DeLucia said.
As the plane reached a gate around 9 p.m., responders raced up an outside stair to the sky bridge, entered the plane, and determined passengers could exit into the terminal, DeLucia said.
"There was a smell, but it wasn't like smoke billowing out the door when they opened up. The majority of the smoke was in the pilot's compartment," he said. The pilot and co-pilot, three flight attendants, and one passenger were sent to area hospitals.
All were treated for minor smoke inhalation and were released. The co-pilot also was treated for minor cuts on his hand, caused when the window shattered, DeLucia said.
Null said the airline, with more than an hour to prepare, had not arranged for food or water at PBIA; passengers waited hours for both.
"It would have been very easy to make a call to a local pizza shop," Null said.
Wayne Hoffman, an illusionist based in Reading, Pa., was returning home after performing on a cruise.
As passengers waited, "everyone was really depressed," Hoffman said. So he entertained them with an impromptu 45-minute "mind reading" show.
"I'd say it was the most interesting venue I've ever performed," Hoffman said. The flight left PBIA at 2:38 a.m. and arrived at Philadelphia at 4:48 a.m.
The NTSB said it would not send an investigator but an aerospace engineer was collecting information from the FAA and American. Both flight recorders were removed.
The agency allowed American to replace the malfunctioning heater and the broken windshield.
American spokeswoman Fagan said the plane would be put back into rotation "as soon as possible."
As Paul Null waited for the flight to land, he wrote three letters: to his wife of four and a half years, his 4-year-old son and his 2-year-old daughter.
"It was just how much I loved them and some advice for my son on being a man. Just that family is more important than anything else." But, he said, "My wife doesn't want to read it. She said I wrote it under the guise that I wouldn't be here and I was here. "She said, ëI know how you feel. Just continue to tell me every day and I won't have to read it in a letter.'"
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