Pilots operate 9-hour flight to nowhere after windshield cracks

A Boxing Day flight to Brazil from the Netherlands was forced to return to its departure point midway through the journey because of a cracked windshield in the cockpit. KLM flight KL705 departed from Amsterdam Schipol at 10.41am and was due to land in Rio de Janeiro at 18.20pm, both local time. The total journey time would have been just under 12 hours. However, around four hours and 40 minutes into the flight, the aircraft was forced to turn around over the Atlantic after the windshield’s outer pane cracked. The sound was loud enough to be audible in the passenger cabin. The pilots told air traffic controllers that the issue was “only the outer pane, so no very big damage of the window [sic]”, according to the report, and they decided to return to Amsterdam despite being closer to both the Azores and the Canary Islands. After a little over nine hours, the aircraft landed safely back in the Netherlands where passengers on board were moved to a replacement aircraft. They eventually made it to Rio de Janeiro with a delay of over 14 hours.<br/>