from Hacker News

United MAX Hit by Falling Object at 36,000 Feet

by d_silin on 10/19/25, 5:54 PM with 224 comments

  • by bronco21016 on 10/19/25, 8:43 PM

    There are some other pictures circulating showing the exterior of the aircraft. It definitely appears something hit the aircraft. There is a skid mark on the frame around the window.[1]

    Will be interesting to read if an investigative report is made public.

    [1]https://viewfromthewing.com/new-cockpit-photos-may-show-what...

  • by JBiserkov on 10/19/25, 8:38 PM

  • by jccc on 10/20/25, 12:44 PM

    From the first paragraph:

    Earlier reports suggested it could have been something from space but that seems unlikely since the velocity of anything that survived reentry would likely have caused substantial damage beyond a cracked windshield. The theory was likely amplified by the captain of the flight who reportedly described the object that hit the plane as “space debris.”

    Maybe the submitted headline isn’t justified?

  • by krisoft on 10/19/25, 8:14 PM

    > Apparently only one layer of the windshield was damaged

    How does that square with the picture of the pilot’s arm with tiny cuts? Did the space debris only damage the internal layer? Something is not adding up to me here.

  • by jjwiseman on 10/20/25, 3:35 AM

    It seems like the article has been updated: "Sources told AVweb Sunday that the focus of the investigation is on a weather balloon payload." This is far more likely than a meteor.

  • by thayne on 10/20/25, 3:10 AM

    The article itself says the object was probably a weather balloon, not space debris, and the title of the article is now "United MAX Hit by Falling Object at 36,000 Feet".

    Maybe the title here should be updated?

  • by hughes on 10/19/25, 7:57 PM

    There should be small pieces of whatever they hit embedded in the body & glass of the aircraft. As long as they are analyzed, the cause of this won't remain a mystery forever.

  • by rawling on 10/19/25, 6:54 PM

  • by seltzered_ on 10/21/25, 6:35 AM

    An update to this, it sounds like there's a possibility it was a collision with a WindBorne weather balloon not space debris - see https://x.com/johndeanl/status/1980462264974209292 & (or https://bsky.app/profile/planet4589.bsky.social/post/3m3oeoc... )

  • by jbverschoor on 10/19/25, 9:48 PM

    Out of all planes, it had to be the 737 max

  • by sipofwater on 10/19/25, 9:14 PM

    "Something from “space” may have just struck a United Airlines flight over Utah" "“NTSB gathering radar, weather, flight recorder data.”": https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/something-from-space-m... (arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/something-from-space-may-have-just-struck-a-united-airlines-flight-over-utah/)

  • by Stevvo on 10/19/25, 10:01 PM

    My first guess would a bird. Bird strikes happen all the time; there are billions of birds. Next guess would be a drone; there are a lot more drones flying around than spacecraft.

  • by sandworm101 on 10/20/25, 1:16 AM

    My money is on drone.

    There are more drones up there than falling rocks. There are probably more classified drones up there than falling rocket parts. I suspect this aircraft collided with something far more terrestrial. Something with its transponder off. Any chinese balloons over denver at the moment?

  • by ChaoPrayaWave on 10/20/25, 8:26 AM

    If this is indeed man made space debris, who is responsible under current international rules? If it were to collide with a civilian aircraft and cause an air crash in the future, would there be an embarrassing situation where the culprit could not be found?

  • by fracus on 10/19/25, 10:33 PM

    Isn't the speed of descent of objects falling out of orbit so great they usually burn up before hitting the ground, and wouldn't that speed cause them to easily penetrate into the interior of the plane?

  • by throwawayffffas on 10/20/25, 5:43 AM

    > Whatever hit the plane, it was an enormously rare event and possibly the first time anything has collided with an aircraft at that altitude other than a projectile launched with that intended purpose.

    There it goes the big sky theory once again, someone let the guy know there were six mid air collisions this year alone.

  • by JCM9 on 10/19/25, 11:08 PM

    Not clear yet what happened but from the exterior photos it’s pretty obvious they struck something.

    Space debris isn’t implausible, although there are several other possibilities too.

  • by thehappypm on 10/20/25, 6:47 PM

    Is it possible that this was a bullet?

    A 50 cal bullet is estimated to reach 15,000 feet if fired straight up.

    But this is Colorado: in the most extreme scenario, standing atop Mount Elbert, you’re already at ~15,000 feet.

    Combine these two — and account for the dramatically reduced air resistance along the bullet’s path starting from high altitidue — you could conceivably get a bullet that high

    Some dope standing at high elevation blasting bullets into the sky in Colorado seems as plausible as a meteor

  • by ChrisArchitect on 10/19/25, 11:44 PM

  • by theincredulousk on 10/20/25, 8:33 AM

    If only the first layer of windshield was damaged how is the pilot getting hit by shrapnel

  • by cdelsolar on 10/19/25, 10:53 PM

    Anyone else think about that Asimov robot story with the "intuitive" robot "Jane"? She had discovered which stars were most likely to have planets around them with the right conditions for life and was flying back on an airplane with her human handler when it was hit by a meteorite.

  • by ErikCorry on 10/19/25, 9:45 PM

    Classic Azimov plot line

  • by appreciatorBus on 10/19/25, 9:33 PM

    ATC Audio here:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRM5zgE13_s

    EDIT: looks like the audio starts when they are already arriving at SLC

  • by bigbrained124 on 10/20/25, 3:50 AM

    So normally your wounds don’t scab over instantaneously, what is the real story here? Obviously the majority of satellites are actually balloons/sataloons.

  • by 0xbadcafebee on 10/19/25, 10:59 PM

    Aliens flying drunk again

  • by kleiba on 10/19/25, 8:03 PM

    What are the odds?

  • by saltyoldman on 10/19/25, 6:11 PM

    It definitely would more likely be a meteorite than anything else.

  • by JackAcid on 10/19/25, 9:35 PM

    Dude's arm looks like scabs and I don't see anywhere that claims they are related to the impact.

  • by stevage on 10/20/25, 7:14 AM

    Title is now "United MAX Hit by Falling Object at 36,000 Feet"

  • by russdill on 10/19/25, 9:43 PM

    Could this be from another plane on the same nav route but higher altitude?

  • by L_226 on 10/20/25, 4:50 PM

    SpaceX is testing a weapons system for clandestine assassinations /s

  • by ecommerceguy on 10/19/25, 9:08 PM

    Wasn't there a significant Starlink deorbiting recently?

  • by neverkn0wsb357 on 10/19/25, 11:55 PM

    If this did happen to be space debris as a result of human activity then the likelihood that this becomes a more common occurrence is likely seeing how Kuiper and Starlink are looking to have somewhere around 42,000 satellites and it currently has around 8,000; Kuiper also has similar ambitions.