United flight’s cockpit window may have been struck by weather balloon, company says

By Alex Stambaugh, Amanda Musa, CNN

(CNN) — A mysterious object that cracked a windshield on a United Airlines flight, injuring a pilot and forcing an emergency landing, may have been a weather balloon.

WindBorne, a California start-up focused on advanced weather forecasting and atmospheric data collection, said in a statement Monday it believes one of its balloons likely hit the plane.

United Flight 1093, a Boeing 737 traveling from Denver to Los Angeles, landed safely in Utah Thursday with 134 passengers and six crew members onboard, according to the airline.

Air traffic control audio from LiveATC.net showed the pilots remained calm and declared an emergency as they diverted to land at Salt Lake City.

The first officer in the cockpit was treated for minor injuries upon the plane’s landing, the Salt Lake City Fire Department said.

Windborne said it is cooperating with the NTSB and FAA on their investigation.

“We immediately rolled out changes to minimize time spent between 30,000 and 40,000 feet,” the company said. “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.”

The plane later flew to Rockford, Illinois, where United Airlines performs maintenance on its 737s, according to the flight tracking site FlightAware.

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CNN’s Aaron Cooper contributed to this report.