This is an excerpt from a report made to the Aviation Safety Reporting System. The narrative is written by the pilot, rather than FAA or NTSB officials. To maintain anonymity, many details, such as aircraft model or airport, are often scrubbed from the reports.
While cruising at FL180 enroute from ZZZ to ZZZ1 under control of ATC, an unknown foreign object impacted the windshield, fracturing the outer glass layer. The windshield remained intact.
I advised ATC and requested vectors to the nearest suitable airport. An instrument approach was required with an uneventful landing.
The incident resulted in no injuries to the pilot or passenger onboard the PA-46 Malibu Meridian.
The unknown foreign object appears to possibly been some form of space debris for at the time of the incident the aircraft was not near any convective activity nor was it experiencing any other weather phenomenon.
Primary Problem: Environment
ACN: 1769815
Things and such fall off of airliners (blue ice) as well as military (gear doors) aircraft. If you had evidence (material) to have examined you’d know where it came from. My brother heard some debris from space come crashing down near his residence in OH decades ago. The photos he sent me of it looked like burnt batteries it had an slight odor of acid. The material broke down over time and turned to dust. The colleges he shown it to weren’t interested in it either. They assumed it was just a hoax.
Frozen lav juice from an airliner passing overhead.
I suspect any article falling from space would have penetrated the windshield, the pilot and the back of the aircraft.
Highly unlikely space debris. If it had reinterred from space it would have been more than hot enough to thermally pierce the windshield. More likely scenario would be an item/article falling off an aircraft flying at a much higher altitude but in vicinity of the Malibu. I would check ATC radar tapes to see who was in the vicinity above their altitude.
Further, had you been looking out the windshield at that time, you would have probably seen it similar to a tracer round a second or so before it hit, because it would have been glowing.
I’ve seen stuff fall out of space, as it were, and it was still glowing at 100′ AGL before it finished burning up. You had to be at the right place at the right time to see such a thing.
Hmmmm…. link to ACN: 1769815 did NOT got to accident summary… only a ‘blank accident reporting format’.
This is the second time in 2-weeks your link to an ACN failed to go to the source reporting document.
First time I blew-it-off as a hiccup… this is NOW a trend. I tried 3-different browsers… same dead-end.
I’ve fixed the link so it should work now. Thanks for letting us know.
I just tried it–doesn’t give the actual report.
Nope… The link still doesn’t work!
When you get to search page: select report number. This will pop up in search criteria. hit click here then enter the number. run query and you will get a link to that report and a other links. The report has no more information then in the story.
It could have been a black meteorite. There is a video of a skydiver almost getting hit by one. It is basically a small meteor that broke up in the upper atmosphere and is falling at its terminal velocity. If its not a metal type then there would not be much momentum. Anything that reenters usually is not hot in the lower atmosphere and is falling at terminal velocity. I am not saying it was not blueberry ice though. 😉
Just as likely, a screw that fell out from a airliner at FL360 or so
The more unlikely something is to happen, the more surprised we are when it finally does. So I suppose this is possible. Unlikely, but possible.