Cracked window forces plane to land

A passenger checks the information of flight departures at Beijing's international airport, China Monday, April 19, 2010. Several thousand air passengers were stranded in Asia for days as flights were grounded because of a massive cloud of ash from an Icelandic volcano that paralyzed European airports. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)

A passenger checks the information of flight departures at Beijing's international airport, China Monday, April 19, 2010. Several thousand air passengers were stranded in Asia for days as flights were grounded because of a massive cloud of ash from an Icelandic volcano that paralyzed European airports. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)

Published Aug 13, 2014

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Bangkok - A Thai Airways plane en route from Sydney to Bangkok made an emergency landing on the Indonesian island of Bali after a crack was discovered in the cockpit window, officials said on Wednesday.

The Boeing 747, carrying 273 passengers and 21 crew, was six hours into the journey on Tuesday when the captain found the defect and decided to land on Bali, the airline said in a statement.

A spokesman for the island's airport described the landing at around 5pm (09h00 GMT) as a “minor disruption”.

There were no reports of injuries and the passengers stayed in a Bali hotel overnight. They were set to fly on to Bangkok later on Wednesday in another plane.

Thai Airways said it was sending a team to Bali to investigate the incident and supervise the changing of the damaged window.

In September last year, more than a dozen passengers were slightly injured when a Thai Airways jet skidded off the runway in Bangkok after the landing gear malfunctioned.

Just over a week before that incident, dozens of passengers and crew were injured when a Thai Airways A380 superjumbo hit severe turbulence during a flight from Bangkok to Hong Kong. - AFP

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