Hopefully the crew is okay but luckily the screen didn’t completely fail like with that BA flight in the 80s.

https://liveandletsfly.com/united-airlines-737-windshield-interstellar-object/

 

Space particles do fall to earth at times, could be. Just as unlikely would be something falling from an aircraft above. It does ‘seem’ like an impact mark. I’d think the damage would be analyzed, could be identifying particles were transferred.

 

radiosonde

 

Alien abduction gone wrong.....

 

Yes, this. Looking at the size of the impact and considering the extreme odds against getting hit by re-entry debris. A balloon could just hang out in the FL's on an airway until somebody finally hit it.

Still obviously a rare event, but much more plausible.

 

https://windbornesystems.com/blog/ua-1093

UA 1093

On Thursday, 16 October, Foreign Object Debris (FOD) struck the windshield of UA1093, a 737 MAX aircraft, at approximately 36,000 ft. WindBorne began investigating this incident at 11pm on Sunday, 19 October, and we believe that the FOD was likely a WindBorne balloon.

At 6am PT Monday morning, we sent our preliminary investigation to both the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and are working with both organizations to further investigate this incident. We are grateful that to our knowledge there were no serious injuries and no loss of pressurization. The flight, which was en route from Denver to Los Angeles, diverted to Salt Lake City. The plane itself later flew to Chicago.

WindBorne has conducted more than 4,000 launches. We have been coordinating with the FAA for the entire history of the company and file NOTAMs (aviation alerts) for every balloon we launch.

The system is designed to be safe in the event of a midair collision. This is the purpose of the FAA Part 101 and ICAO weight limits. Our balloon is 2.4 pounds at launch and gets lighter throughout flight.

We are working closely with the FAA on this matter. We immediately rolled out changes to minimize time spent between 30,000 and 40,000 feet. These changes are already live with immediate effect. Additionally, we are further accelerating our plans to use live flight data to autonomously avoid planes, even if the planes are at a non-standard altitude. We are also actively working on new hardware designs to further reduce impact force magnitude and concentration.

 

Well, we now know the odds of hitting a weather balloon are 1 in 4,000.

 

3-4 hours after this occurred, one of my flights reported observing a balloon or object they estimated to be at FL500+. Contacted ZDV but they didn't have any idea what it was. Flight was eastbound transcon, southwest of DVC just west of 4 corners area. Guessing 1093 hit wx package hanging from balloon then it was cut loose and floated up after losing it's payload.

 

That's an interesting twist!

 

its wild i would hear reports of balloons at 380 and figure it was a helium balloon but this is nuts. ought to have a transponder like a drone? in controlled airspace?? feel like they do and im missing something.