An airplane en route to Orlando was forced to turn around after crew members discovered that multiple windows had been melted and damaged by high-powered video production lights during a video shoot the previous day.
According to a report from the Air Accidents Investigation Branch, which investigates aircraft accidents within the United Kingdom, the incident took place during a flight from London Stansted Airport to Orlando International Airport on October 4.
The aircraft, an Airbus A321, was scheduled to embark on a multi-day charter with a flight crew of three pilots, an engineer, a load master, and six cabin crew members. In addition to the 11 crew members on board, the flight also had 9 passengers who were “all employees of the tour operator or aircraft operating company.”
After the aircraft departed at around 11:15 a.m. local time, passengers say they noticed that the “aircraft cabin seemed noisier and colder than they were used to.”
As the aircraft climbed to over 10,000 feet, a loadmaster walked to the back of the aircraft and noticed “increased cabin noise.”
As he was walking back, the loadmaster says he noticed a window seal that was “flapping in the airflow” with a windowpane that “appeared to have slipped down.” The crew member described the noise as “‘loud enough to damage your hearing’,” according to the report.
The aircraft continued to climb past 13,000 feet with “no abnormal indications on the flight deck.” According to the report, the pressurization system was also “operating normal” as the flight continued to ascend.
At 14,000, the flight crew stopped the climb and reduced speed while an engineer and pilot went to examine the window. After inspecting the window, the crew agreed thatt he aircraft should return to London Stansted Airport.
The flight landed at the airport around 36 minutes after it first departed.
During an inspection of the outside of aircraft while grounded, crew members discovered that two cabin windowpanes were “missing and a third was dislodged,”
according to the report.
The ensuing investigation revealed that the day before the flight, the aircraft was used for “filming on the ground.” During that film shoot, external lights were shone through the “cabin windows to give the illusion of a sunrise.” The lights were focused on the cabin windows for approximately “five and a half hours,” according to the report.
Further examination revealed that two whole window assemblies were missing, and that a third window and its inner pane and seal were displaced. The report also notes that a “shattered outer pane” was recovered from the entrance to a “rapid-exit taxiway” during a “routine runway inspection after the aircraft landed.”
A fourth window also protruded from the plane and was adjacent to the other three damaged windows.
“The windows appear to have sustained thermal damage and distortion because of elevated temperatures while illuminated for approximately four to five and a half hours during filming activity the day before the flight,” reads the report. Investigators say that it is “likely that the flood lights” were positioned “closer than 10 meters.”
An examination of the damaged windows found that the “foam ring material on the back of the cabin liners” had been “melted in the areas adjacent to the windows that were damaged or missing.”
The windowpanes were “deformed and shrunk” and “no longer formed an effective interface with the rubber seals,” according to the report.
The organization says that a “different level of damage” by the same means might have resulted in “more serious consequences, especially if window integrity was lost at higher differential pressure,” according to the report.
“Aircraft owners and operators should consider the hazard posed by such activities to minimize the risk of aircraft damage,” reads the report.