Southwest passengers heard plane window pop

CLEVELAND — Passengers on a Southwest Airlines plane first heard a loud pop and scurried away when they saw a jagged crack in a window that forced the jet to land in Cleveland on Wednesday.

Some on board immediately thought back to just two weeks ago when a jet engine blew apart and broke a window in a deadly accident aboard another Southwest flight.

“It made you nervous because something like this just happened,” said passenger Paul Upshaw of Chicago, who was about two seats from the window. “We didn’t know if it was going to crack open.”

There were no reports of injuries after Flight 957 heading from Chicago to New Jersey landed safely Wednesday after making an abrupt turn toward Cleveland while over Lake Erie, according to tracking data from FlightAware.com.

Some of the plane’s 76 passengers told the Associated Press that the crew quickly checked the window near an emergency exit and handled the situation smoothly.

“People just started scattering,” said Upshaw, who added there was no yelling or screaming. “We didn’t panic.”

Dallas-based Southwest said that the plane was diverted to examine damage to one of the three layers in the window but didn’t immediately release details on how it was broken. Photos taken by passengers and posted on social media showed one window with a large, jagged crack.

Southwest Airlines spokeswoman Brandy King said the plane never lost cabin pressure — which would have triggered oxygen masks to drop down for passengers — and that the pilots did not declare an emergency before landing.

There were no other mechanical problems with the Boeing 737, which was taken out of service, King said.

After the Philadelphia emergency landing, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered inspections of more jet engines. The National Transportation Safety Board believes one of the blades snapped on the Southwest flight, hurling debris that broke a window.

Boeing declined to identify the supplier that manufactured the windows on its 737-700s, the model involved in Wednesday’s incident and last month’s fatal accident.