WindBorne’s Execs Cooperating In Investigation Of Mysterious Incident

After a mysterious collision with what was thought to be either an asteroid or space debris, it’s looking like United Flight 1093 may have hit a weather balloon on Thursday, October 16, as the Boeing 737 MAX was flying from Denver to Los Angeles over Utah at an estimated 36,000 feet MSL.

Images on various channels showed the shattered windscreen and cuts on the pilot’s arm from glass shards. The aircraft’s cabin pressure remained stable however, and was able to divert to Salt Lake City.

The highly improbable collision scenario was pieced together by popular YouTube creator and pilot Scott Manley, who aligned the position of a balloon data point with the aircraft’s flight path.

The images Manley posted show the windscreen with an impact shatter mark and the frame around it. There is also a partial image of a weather balloon. He explained that weather prediction company WindBorne Systems deploys sounding balloons that use sand for ballast.

Manley said in his post on X, “Here's what the operational part of the @WindBorneWx weather balloon looks like - they use sand as ballast. And here's the plane, I now understand why the paint on the window frame looks like it's been sand blasted.”

Kai Marshland, co-Founder of WindBorne Systems said, “I think this was a WindBorne balloon. We learned about UA1093 and the potential that it was related to one of our balloons at 11 pm PT on Sunday and immediately looked into it. At 6 am PT, we sent our preliminary investigation to both NTSB and FAA, and are working with both of them to investigate further.”

WindBorne is a Palo Alto, California-based company that deploys small (2.6 lb / 1.2 kg) balloons that gather data such as temperature, winds, pressure, and other data used as initial condition baselines for weather models.

The company says its balloons are compliant with all airspace rules. In addition, the company provides real-time tracking for government partners. It says, “For example, we maintain active lines of communication with the FAA to ensure our operations satisfy all relevant regulatory requirements. We also provide government partners with direct access to our comprehensive, real-time balloon tracking system via our proprietary software, WindBorne Live.”

FMI:  windbornesystems.com/