Tech CEO admits responsibility for smashing airplane windshield mid-flight

It was last week when reports surfaced about a mysterious object potentially from space colliding with the windscreen of a United Airlines plane while it was traveling over Utah, with theories pointing to space debris possibly from a defunct satellite re-entering Earth's atmosphere, or even birds.

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However, it was neither of those theories, and the object that struck the windshield of flight UA1093, which caused enough damage to shatter the windshield and injure one of the pilots in the cockpit, was a weather balloon from the company WindBorne. Speaking to Ars Technica, WindBorne agreed that it was likely one of its balloons after calculating the position of the balloon and cross-referencing it with the flight path of the plane.

The theory of a mysterious space-based object colliding with the 737 MAX aircraft came after one of the pilots described the object that impacted the aircraft as "space debris". Notably, the collision didn't cause any fatalities, only injuries, as images shared to social media show one of the pilot's arms being cut up by seemingly small shards of glass that sprayed into the cockpit following the impact.

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As for the weather balloon, WindBorne has a fleet of these balloons around the world, and each of them is quite small and reasonably light, weighing just 2.6 pounds (1.2 kg). The balloons measure the temperature, wind, pressure, and other atmospheric data. This data is typically used by companies to generate accurate models of weather cycles.

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WindBorne writes that it's highly irregular for a weather balloon to collide with an aircraft, and that its balloons don't actually pose a threat to aircraft.

"The quick answer is our constellation of Global Sounding Balloons (GSBs), which we call WindBorne Atlas, doesn't pose a threat to airplanes or other objects in the sky. It's not only highly improbable that a WindBorne balloon could even collide with an aircraft in the first place; but our balloons are so lightweight that they would not cause significant damage," reads the WindBorne FAQ

"For example, we maintain active lines of communication with the FAA to ensure our operations satisfy all relevant regulatory requirements. We also provide government partners with direct access to our comprehensive, real-time balloon tracking system via our proprietary software, WindBorne Live," the company states