The inner windshield of an Alaska Airlines plane cracked as it landed in Oregon in the latest issue involving a Boeing jet.
The flight from Washington DC was descending at the Portland International Airport on Sunday when crew members noticed a small crack on the inner windshield, airline officials told The Post on Tuesday.
“The crew followed their checklists and the aircraft continued safely to its destination as scheduled,” the airline said in a statement.
The airline’s Boeing 737-800s have five layers in their windscreens, with an outer pane, three inner layers, and an inner pane, the statement noted.
“If an inner pane cracks, the other pane and layers can maintain cabin pressure,” airline officials said.
No injuries were reported among the 159 passengers and six crew members onboard, the airline noted.
A maintenance team has since inspected and repaired the windshield, and the plane is back in service, airline officials said. Boeing declined to comment.
The cracked windshield is just the latest issue to befall a Boeing plane in more than two months — ever since a door plug on another Alaska Airlines flight shockingly blew off mid-air and was forced to make an emergency landing.
In the aftermath, the Federal Aviation Administration found dozens of issues involving Boeing’s 737 MAX jet production process, including mechanics at one of its key suppliers using a hotel key card and dish soap as makeshift tools to test compliance.
It also found that Boeing failed 33 out of 89 product audits — a review of specific aspects in the production line — with a total of 97 counts of alleged noncompliance, according to The New York Times.
The issues will now take more than a year to fix, Boeing officials said.
But Boeing has also been plagued by issues on its other lines, including the 737-800s like the one that landed in Portland on Sunday.
Just a few days before, on Friday, another 737-800 lost its own external panel mid-flight.
The United Airlines flight landed safely at Rogue Valley International-Medford Airport in Oregon on Friday.
There was never any indication of a problem and no emergency was ever declared during the flight, which had 139 passengers and 6 crew members on board, according to United.
But once the plane reached the gate, an external panel was found to be missing, halting operations at the airport while a runway safety check was conducted, airport director Amber Judd told The Post in a statement.
Airport staff searched for the missing panel on the airport premises but were unable to locate it.
“After finding no debris on the airfield, normal operations at MFR resumed a few minutes later,” she said.
United Airlines said it plans a “thorough examination” of the 25-year-old plane and will “perform all the needed repairs before it returns to service.”
