Before each new flight takes off, the pre-flight inspection involves everything from checking the brakes to going over the oil and fuel pressure.
While it also includes the flight crew scanning the plane both inside and out to ensure that nothing appears physically off, windows are rarely the focus of such checks because functioning ones are usually taken for a given.
Related: Another flight had turbulence so severe it caused injuries
But a recent flight from London to Orlando on charter airline Titan Airways was already in the air when a flight attendant noticed that one of the portholes was missing a seal.
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'The cabin crew told the passengers to remain seated and keep their seatbelts fastened...'
According to a report of the incident from United Kingdom's Air Accidents Investigation Branch, the Airbus EADSF A321neo had just taken off from London's Stansted Airport when some of the passengers started mentioning that the cabin was "noisier and colder than they were used to."
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A flight crew member started inspecting the plane and noticed that the window seal on one of the windows "was flapping in the airflow and the windowpane appeared to have slipped down." When talking to investigators, the flight crew member described the cabin noise as "loud enough to damage your hearing."
"Having inspected the window, it was agreed the aircraft should return to Stansted," reads the report. "The cabin crew told the passengers to remain seated and keep their seatbelts fastened, and reminded them about the use of oxygen masks if that became necessary."
The plane landed safely and, upon an inspection that took place while the passengers sat in the plane, the technicians discovered that "two cabin windowpanes were missing and a third was dislodged" despite the flight crew initially only noticing one in the air.
Lights that may have damaged plane were used to 'give the illusion of a sunrise'
Inspectors' initial suspicion was that the windows were damaged by the high-powered food lights that were used when the plane was being filmed for a movie a day before. The lights were, according to the report, used to "give the illusion of a sunrise."
"Whereas in this case the flight [...] was concluded uneventfully, 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," the report concludes.
The AAIB also said that it will be conducting more investigations to see what kinds of inspections happen after a plane is used for filming and how a similar slip-up can be prevented from occurring again. Titan Airways has not been responding to media requests for comment on the situation.
Commercial aircraft are frequently used in a variety of films. Planes that are out of commission are often loaned or purchased by Hollywood studios for filming purposes but, occasionally, a smaller charter company will allow a plane to be leased for filming purposes during off hours as a separate income stream.
In 2017, Singapore Airlines SINGF famously refused to allow the first-class cabin of one of its planes to be used for the filming of the movie "Crazy Rich Asians."
