The damaged windshield on the BA plane after it made an emergency landing in Athens on Saturday.
Caroline Edmunds/Twitter
A British Airways flight made an emergency diversion after its windshield shattered mid-flight.
Caroline Edwards, who said she was on the flight, tweeted a picture of the jet’s broken window.
BA told Insider the flight diverted to Athens due to a technical issue.
A British Airways flight made an emergency diversion after its windshield shattered mid-flight, according to a passenger.
Caroline Edmunds tweeted that she was on BA0624 from London to Rhodes, Greece, on Saturday afternoon when it was forced to land in Athens after the windshield “broke”.
Edmunds, who posted a picture of the Airbus’s windshield after landing in Athens, said the experience was “terrifying” while thanking the pilots for diverting the plane safely.
“Now happily waiting for another not so dramatic flight to Rhodes!” she added.
Data from FlightRadar24 shows the flight was diverted to Athens on Saturday afternoon. It quickly descended from about 36,000 feet, suggesting the incident occurred at high altitude.
A BA spokesperson told Insider in an email: “Due to a technical issue, the flight diverted to Athens and landed safely. We apologised to the customers and a replacement aircraft was arranged to get them to their final destination.”
Flight tracking data shows the flight eventually departed again from Athens to complete its trip to Rhodes early on Sunday morning. British Airways told Insider it was operated by a different aircraft.
Shattered windows might be more closely associated with a plane hitting a foreign object, such as a bird strike at a low altitude, but a faltering windshield at higher levels is not unheard of.
In April, a Delta flight from Salt Lake City to Washington, DC, was forced to make an emergency landing in Denver when the windshield cracked in mid-air.