On Sunday, 27 September 2026, a Mesa Airlines flight was forced to return to Houston, Texas, after its windshield cracked shortly after take-off. The pilots were able to safely land the airplane, causing no injuries.
United Airlines Flight 6309, which was operated by Mesa Airlines on Sunday 27 September, was making its way from George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas, to El Paso International Airport. However, shortly after takeoff at 12.20 pm, the pilots of the Embraer E175 were forced to make a U-turn.
“We need to level out altitude right now. If we can delay the frequency change, please; we just had our glass break. We’ll declare an emergency, sir, uh, it looks like, uh, the glass busted completely through; it’s not just a layer… We’re gonna slow down to 210 [knots] because the glass is actually falling inside,” a pilot can be heard saying in air traffic control recordings obtained by ABC News.
🛫 A plane full of passengers headed to El Paso ended up back at Bush Intercontinental Sunday, shortly after it took off.
— Chron (@chron) September 28, 2026
The windshield on the Mesa Airlines flight shattered not long after it left IAH, and pieces of glass got into the cockpit. The pilot declared an emergency… pic.twitter.com/dzXHW7qECT
Subsequently, the pilots were able to safely return to Houston, where the plane landed at 1:00 pm, and to taxi to the dedicated gateway. Upon its return, the Houston Fire Department was waiting for the plane in order to assess the damage and intervene if needed.
The incident caused no injuries, and passengers were transferred to a replacement aircraft, which landed in El Paso at 3:14 pm according to Flightradar24 data.
Once the broken windshield had been replaced, the plane was declared safe to resume flying by the Houston Fire Department.
“The first officer’s windshield shattered shortly after takeoff and while there was no depressurisation, standard procedure in such cases are to return to field,” a Mesa Airlines spokesperson said in an interview with CNN.
The Federal Aviation Administration is, however, currently investigating the issue. It is yet unclear what exactly caused the windshield to crack in the way it did. In order to make them more resistant, airplane windshields are usually made of multiple layers of tempered glass and other materials. Technically, one cracked layer thus doesn’t lead to depressurisation, but the fact that pieces of glass were falling into the cockpit was alarming.
Although airplane windshields are made to resist all kinds of internal and external shocks – including birds and thermal shocks – they are not infallible. Improper installation of the glass, electrical issues with the anti-ice heating, and degradation over time can, for example, cause even multiple layers of tempered glass to shatter.
In October 2025, another United Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing at Utah’s Salt Lake City International Airport. The windshield of the plane cracked as an object struck it, leaving the pilot injured by shards of glass. At the time, smart weather balloon company WindBorne Systems released a statement saying the incident might have been caused by one of its weather balloons.
