A Boeing plane full of passengers was forced to U-turn just three hours into an 11-hour flight after its windscreen suddenly cracked. Virgin Flight VS41 was on its way to San Francisco on May 23 when the central windscreen on the Boeing Dreamliner 787-9 unexpectedly shattered. The plane, which had taken off from Heathrow just three hours earlier, was cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet, leaving cabin staff in shock. However, they ruled out the possibility of explosive decompression, which would have resulted in anything not secured to the cabin's interior being sucked out into the -50C atmosphere outside, and the flight was diverted. Pilots were compelled to return to the UK, where airport investigators were baffled to find what appeared to be dents on the four-layer-thick glass.
