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Travel

A Southwest Plane Made an Emergency Landing After Window Cracked Mid-Flight

Less than a month after an engine exploded on another Southwest plane.
Photos via Twitter users @Dro_AA and @ChaikelK

In this week's mid-flight nightmare, a Southwest Airlines plane headed from Chicago to Newark, New Jersey, was forced to make an emergency landing on Wednesday after a window cracked, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Videos and photos posted on Twitter appear to show a portion of the glass panel missing from the plane—which was diverted to Cleveland.

No one was hurt when the window cracked from the outside, and oxygen masks weren't even deployed on the plane. In fact, the incident was so minor that the FAA didn't even consider it an emergency. Still, passengers reported the incident as "scary," and that it had caused a loud noise, according to CNN.

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An airline spokesperson said in a statement that the aircraft will undergo a "maintenance review," and that Southwest was working to get flight WN957's 76 passengers home. However, she did not explain why a window with "multiple layers of panes" managed to crack while the aircraft was flying at 26,000 feet.

"The flight landed uneventfully in Cleveland," she said, according to the New York Post.

Although everyone made it safely to the ground, the news is harrowing as it comes less than a month after a passenger was killed when the engine on another Southwest plane exploded in the middle of a flight. In case you managed to erase that Final Destination–worthy story from your brain, a woman was partially sucked out of a window when it happened, passengers say.

But before you panic and consider going all-in on Amtrak, it's important to remember that the April 17 incident marked the first passenger death aboard a plane in nine years. Oh, and that trains are also a nightmare right now. Apparently, there's no safe way to get anywhere anymore.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.