Last Friday, an American Airlines flight between Austin and Charlotte suffered a cracked windshield, prompting a diversion to Birmingham, Alabama.
It remains clear that this incident was serious enough to prompt a diversion to the nearest airfield.
Without further ado, let’s get into it…
AA1285 – Austin to Charlotte: Birmingham Diversion…
American Airlines flight AA1285 is a routine scheduled flight between Austin and Charlotte.
The affected rotation involved in the diversion to Birmingham, Alabama was N971AN.
As per data from Planespotters.net, N971AN is a 22.6 year old Boeing 737-800 that was delivered to the airline back in September 2001.
Furthermore, of the 737-800 variant, the airline has 303 of them in the fleet, of which 292 are in active service and 11 are parked.
Average fleet age for that variant of aircraft is at 14.4 years at the time of writing.
American Airlines flight AA1285 departed Austin at 1448 local time on March 22 and proceeded eastbound to Charlotte.
As per reporting from The Aviation Herald, the crew experienced a cracked windshield in-flight.
This prompted a diversion to Birmingham, Alabama as a safety precaution in case the issue got worse.
AA1285 landed into Birmingham at 1749 local time without further incident.
Re-entering Commercial Service Soon…
It is understood that the American Airlines 737-800 was grounded in Birmingham following the incident involving AA1285 between Austin and Charlotte.
Data from RadarBox shows that the aircraft will reposition to Miami, where it will re-enter commercial service tomorrow.
With this in mind, it looks as if the issue has been fixed by maintenance technicians if that is the case.
Of course, this is subject to change, and all eyes will be on when the aircraft re-enters service.
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