(Yicai Global) Feb. 21 -- A plane operated by Juneyao Airlines, one of China’s major private airlines, was forced to make an emergency landing in Wuhan after the cockpit window cracked during flight.

En route to Chengdu from Shanghai on the evening of Feb. 19, flight HO1231 bound instead landed at Wuhan Tianhe Airport after the outer layer of a cockpit side window cracked, Juneyao Airlines said on its Weibo account yesterday, without disclosing any further details.

Radar data showed the Airbus A320-200 began to descend after over an hour in the air, and quickly came down 4,381 meters in the following seven minutes. The plane was almost 13 years old, Yicai Global learned.

The common causes of cockpit windscreen cracks include material aging, delamination, uneven heating, overheating, foreign object impact, and poor installation, though the actual cause in this case needs to wait for the results of the official investigation, Senior Captain Chen Jianguo told Yicai Global.

The front windscreens of Airbus aircraft have six layers and all of them can bear twice the maximum pressure difference of the aircraft, so the plane is safe as long as any middle or inner glass layer is still in place, Chen added.

Like other airlines around the world, Juneyao Airlines’ business has been severely hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Shanghai-based firm expects a net loss of between CNY330 million and CNY420 million (USD52.2 and USD66.4 million) for last year, slightly narrower than its 2020 loss of CNY474 million, the carrier said at the end of last month.

The right cockpit windscreen of a China Sichuan Airlines flight to Lhasa from Chongqing burst off in May 2018. The cabin of the Airbus A319 lost pressure and oxygen masks were released. But thanks to the crew, the plane landed safely in Chengdu. The event was memorialized in a movie called The Captain.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Futura Costaglione