Frontier A319 near New Orleans on May 4th 2015, "lost windshield", emergency descent
Last Update: April 27, 2016 / 13:58:11 GMT/Zulu time
Incident Facts
Date of incident
May 4, 2015
Classification
Incident
Airline
Frontier Airlines
Flight number
F9-1225
Departure
Orlando, United States
Destination
Las Vegas, United States
Aircraft Registration
N941FR
Aircraft Type
Airbus A319
ICAO Type Designator
A319
The remainder of the flight was cancelled.
On May 19th 2015 the French BEA reported in their weeky bulletin that the windshield cracked and smoke occurred. The occurrence was rated a serious incident, the NTSB is investigating.
On Apr 27th 2016 the NTSB released their final report concluding the probable cause of the incident was:
The ingression of moisture into the windshield’s laminate layer, which induced electrical arcing in the windshield heating system that subsequently cracked the outer glass pane of the windshield.
The NTSB reported that about one hour into the flight while maintaining FL340 the first officer pointed to his windshield, where arcing and sparks were seen at the bottom of the windshield quickly developing from the left hand side and intensifying towards the right hand side. Before the captain could call the related checklist out a pop sound was heard and the whole right hand windshield cracked. The crew could not recall whether there had been any indications regarding the windshield heating, the flight data recorder revealed an "ANTI ICE R WINDSHIELD" ECAM message. Queried about 4 months after the occurrence the captain could also not recall whether the first step of the cracked windshield checklist to determine, whether the inner pane had cracked, had been executed or not. However, the captain recalled, that the bottom left edge of the windshield appeared to be melted and there was also smoke on the flight deck and the crew concluded these events were related.
The windshield had been installed on the aircraft during aircraft manufacture and had accumulated 38,085 flight hours in 16,015 flight cycles.
An examination of the windshield revealed that there was evidence of repairs to the moisture seal along the entire upper and aft (right) edges. The outer pane of the windshield showed moderate cracking with portions of material missing at the origin of the cracking. The wiring and connectors appeared normal. Evidence of moisture ingress was found at the lower forward (left) edge of the windshield.
Incident Facts
Date of incident
May 4, 2015
Classification
Incident
Airline
Frontier Airlines
Flight number
F9-1225
Departure
Orlando, United States
Destination
Las Vegas, United States
Aircraft Registration
N941FR
Aircraft Type
Airbus A319
ICAO Type Designator
A319
This article is published under license from Avherald.com. © of text by Avherald.com.
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