Mid-Air Collision With Weather Balloon Cracks Airliner Windshield

[Randy Zipser]

This is breaking news on October 21, 2025: a United Airlines flight over Utah was determined to have collided with a weather balloon at 36K feet, cracking the windshield and forcing an emergency landing. Fortunately, this is a very rare event, considering how many weather balloons are launched daily over the United States. Here's the story as reported by Reuters News:

Weather balloon may be responsible for mid-air United flight cracked windshield

 

[Randy Zipser]

Here's a bit of additional information about WindBorne Systems, the owner of the weather balloon involved in this aircraft collision incident. I had assumed--incorrectly--that the balloon was launched by the NWS, using a WindBorne Systems-manufactured balloon. However, WindBorne Systems is a private company that is collecting atmospheric data (for proprietary AI weather modelling) independently of the U.S. government. The article below gives some good information about this company's activities and its balloons:

It wasn’t space debris that struck a United Airlines plane—it was a weather balloon