Plane makes emergency return to Isle of Man

Keedowah

Question on this:

Cracked windscreen plane makes emergency return to Isle of Man

Looking at the map, the plane was nearly at Liverpool when it turned around, why not divert to Liverpool, or Manchester?

basill

Don't know wasn't there and wasn't the captain. Would suspect that the inner ply wasn't affected so no imminent threat to the safety of the aircraft and therefore a decision was made to return passengers to origin for operational reasons.

jasper100

Keedowah wrote: »

Question on this:

Cracked windscreen plane makes emergency return to Isle of Man

Looking at the map, the plane was nearly at Liverpool when it turned around, why not divert to Liverpool, or Manchester?

No expert but it was probably at significant altitude by then so it couldn't just land down on Liverpool like a helicopter. It would have had to reduce altitude and get a flight path. Probably as fast to land back at Isle of Mann.

Brennus335

jasper100 wrote: »

No expert but it was probably at significant altitude by then so it couldn't just land down on Liverpool like a helicopter. It would have had to reduce altitude and get a flight path. Probably as fast to land back at Isle of Mann.

Bingo

billy few mates

Brennus335 wrote: »

Bingo

More likely an operational decision to return to main base to have it repaired where they're most likely hold spare parts and sufficient manpower, far preferable to a down route or away from base AOG where they probably have neither...?

Stovepipe

In a lot of modern aircraft, the windscreen is a part of the critical load path for the structure, so if it cracks or gets an impact, the pilot has to land as soon as he can and quite often, both screens will be replaced. We had a Bombardier jet use a corner of our hangar one time and the screen had crazed over at high altitude (it actually overheated from it's own heating circuit, very fine wires buried in the layers of glass) and both windscreens were changed. I also saw the same happen to a Fokker 50 on the ground; the screen crazed over completely in a few seconds.

L1011

Tangential to the last post - do pilots see the wires in the screen and end up noticing them conspicuously for the entire rest of the flight; like I do every time I drive a Ford? :pac:

Stovepipe

No, they are very fine but around the edges of the screen, you can see where they enter the window.