Image: Holly Rush
American Airlines Flight 1897 was forced to make an emergency landing Sunday night after flying through a severe thunderstorm. The aircraft, which had departed from San Antonio heading for Phoenix, sustained significant hail damage to the windshield and radome. The A319 diverted to El Paso International Airport (ELP) and landed safely at approximately 8:03 p.m. with no injuries reported. There were 130 passengers and five crewmembers on board.
As can be heard on the LiveATC.netrecording of ELP Approach audio below, the pilots reported that damage to the windshield was severe enough that they had lost most of their forward visibility. The hailstones encountered were estimated to be between 1.5 and 3 inches in diameter. A severe thunderstorm watch had been issued for the region. Rick Kohrs, a programmer and graphic artist who works at the Space Science and Engineering Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, mapped the path of the flight on the sattelite imagry of the storm.
Follow the (terrifying) track of American Airlines Flight 1897 dodging destructive hail storms before a forced landing at El Paso #Texas on June 4th. Path mapped on #GOESEast/#GOES16 imagery by @UWSSEC colleague Rick Kohrs. #AA1897 pic.twitter.com/b4grNpIh6M
— UW-Madison CIMSS (@UWCIMSS) June 5, 2018
American Airlines issued a statement apologizing for the disruption to its customers’ travel plans and said their maintenance team is in the process of evaluating the aircraft. Passengers were put on another flight to Phoenix later that night.
