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here.On Thursday, 16 October, Foreign Object Debris (FOD) struck the windshield of UA1093, a 737 MAX aircraft, at approximately 36,000 ft. WindBorne began investigating this incident on Sunday, 19 October, and we believe that the FOD was likely a WindBorne balloon.
At 6am PT Monday morning, we sent our preliminary investigation to both the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and are working with both organizations to further investigate this incident. We are grateful that to our knowledge there were no serious injuries and no loss of pressurization. The flight, which was en route from Denver to Los Angeles, diverted to Salt Lake City. The plane itself later flew to Chicago.
WindBorne has conducted more than 4,000 launches. We have been coordinating with the FAA for the entire history of the company and file NOTAMs (aviation alerts) for every balloon we launch.
The system is designed to be safe in the event of a midair collision. This is the purpose of the FAA Part 101 and ICAO weight limits. Our balloon is 2.4 pounds at launch and gets lighter throughout flight.
We are working closely with the FAA on this matter. We immediately rolled out changes to minimize time spent between 30,000 and 40,000 feet. These changes are already live with immediate effect. Additionally, we are further accelerating our plans to use live flight data to autonomously avoid planes, even if the planes are at a non-standard altitude. We are also actively working on new hardware designs to further reduce impact force magnitude and concentration.
