Southwest plane with a cracked window diverts to Cleveland

KEY POINTS

• No injuries were reported and the cabin did not lose pressurization, the airline says.
• The incident comes less than a month after a window blew out of one of its planes.
• A fan blade had broken off one of the plane's engines in the fatal April 17 accident.

A Southwest Airlines flight from Chicago to Newark, New Jersey, diverted to Cleveland on Wednesday because of a cracked airplane window. No injures were reported, the airline said.

The diversion comes two weeks after a passenger was killed when a window blew out during a Southwest flight.

Flight 957 was flying from Chicago to Newark with 76 passengers aboard when the crew decided to divert the plane to Cleveland to review "one of the multiple layers of a window pane," the airline said.

On my way to NJ for work and #Southwest957 gets a window crack. Only outside crack so we're all safe. On our way to NJ in new plane. Thanks to the @SouthwestAir crew and pilots for handling it professionally.

The cabin maintained pressurization because each window is made of multiple panes, Southwest said, adding that no emergency landing was requested.

"The aircraft has been taken out of service for maintenance review," said the airline.

On April 17, a fan blade broke off an engine of a Southwest Boeing 737-700, sending shrapnel flying that punctured the fuselage as the plane was flying above 30,000 feet. A passenger was partially sucked out of the window and died, marking the first fatality of a passenger aboard a U.S. airline since 2009.

The pilot of Flight 1380 made a safe emergency landing in Philadelphia, bringing the plane down quickly as the cabin depressurized.

The passenger's death was Southwest's first in its 47 years of flying. In response to the incident, the airline removed its promotions and other marketing. Last week, executives said that bookings dropped following Flight 1380 and warned investors that the company would lose an estimated $50 million to $100 million in revenue as a result.

The airline has canceled dozens of flights to inspect fan blades on the engines on its Boeing 737 fleet and said Tuesday that it expects to complete the desk by mid-May. The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday mandated airlines inspect more engine fan blades, expanding an order it issued in the wake of the accident last month.