WindBorne says its balloons are compliant with all applicable airspace regulations:
The mysterious impact of a United Airlines aircraft in flight last week has sparked plenty of theories as to its cause, from space debris to high-flying birds.
However the question of what happened to flight 1093, and its severely damaged front window, appears to be answered in the form of a weather balloon.
"I think this was a WindBorne balloon," Kai Marshland, co-founder of the weather prediction company WindBorne Systems, told Ars in an email on Monday evening. "We learned about UA1093 and the potential that it was related to one of our balloons at 11 pm PT on Sunday and immediately looked into it. At 6 am PT, we sent our preliminary investigation to both NTSB and FAA, and are working with both of them to investigate further."
WindBorne is a six-year old company that seeks to both collect weather observations with its fleet of small, affordable weather balloons as well as use that atmospheric data for its proprietary artificial intelligence weather models.
Scott Manley, a popular YouTube creator and pilot, was among the first people to speculate online about the collision being caused by a WindBorne balloon, having coordinated the position of a balloon data point with the flight path of the aircraft. Asked about this by Ars, the company confirmed that its balloon likely hit the plane.
The strike occurred Thursday, during a United Airlines flight from Denver to Los Angeles. Images shared on social media showed that one of the two large windows at the front of a 737 MAX aircraft was significantly cracked. Related images also reveal a pilot's arm that has been cut multiple times by what appear to be small shards of glass.
Speculation built over the weekend after one of the aircraft's pilots described the object that impacted the aircraft as "space debris." On Sunday the National Transportation Safety Board confirmed that it is investigating the collision, which did not cause any fatalities. However, one of the pilot's arms appeared to be cut up by small shards of glass from the windshield.
WindBorne has a fleet of global sounding balloons that fly various vertical profiles around the world, gathering atmospheric data. Each balloon is fairly small, with a mass of 2.6 pounds (1.2 kg), and provides temperature, wind, pressure, and other data about the atmosphere. Such data is useful for establishing initial conditions upon which weather models base their outputs.
Notably, the company has an FAQ on its website (which clearly was written months or years ago, before this incident) that addresses several questions, including: Why don't WindBorne balloons pose a risk to airplanes?
"The quick answer is our constellation of Global Sounding Balloons (GSBs), which we call WindBorne Atlas, doesn't pose a threat to airplanes or other objects in the sky. It's not only highly improbable that a WindBorne balloon could even collide with an aircraft in the first place; but our balloons are so lightweight that they would not cause significant damage.
WindBorne also said that its balloons are compliant with all applicable airspace regulations.
"For example, we maintain active lines of communication with the FAA to ensure our operations satisfy all relevant regulatory requirements," the company states. "We also provide government partners with direct access to our comprehensive, real-time balloon tracking system via our proprietary software, WindBorne Live."
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 25, @02:33AM (3 children)
Still trying to hide the UFOs
(Score: 5, Funny) by driverless on Saturday October 25, @02:57AM (1 child)
Well it wasn't just a weather balloon, it was swamp gas from a weather balloon that was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 26, @03:45AM
You're right. It is swamp gas [external-preview.redd.it]!
(Score: 2) by turgid on Saturday October 25, @08:25AM
I was going to say that I hope our Takyon is OK, that he hasn't crashed his flying saucer.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Saturday October 25, @03:33AM (5 children)
Which is fine until the 'highly improbable' happens and 'significant damage' and personal injury result.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 25, @05:18AM (4 children)
It depends on the flight path. Weather balloons are quite capable of flying well above altitudes at which airplanes fly. But obviously that didn't happen - perhaps to get good weather data, the balloons have to repeatedly run through a large column of atmosphere. It looks to me like the low, dangerous altitude was a standard part of the flight path of the balloon. And well, if you have large numbers of balloon flights which repeatedly dip into the lower atmosphere where commercial airplanes fly, then you will get a lot of opportunities for highly improbable events.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Saturday October 25, @06:58AM (1 child)
I think that you are stating the obvious. The risk is not so improbable as to be zero. No 'significant damage' is obviously wrong.
Are you taking a contrary position just to have another of your meaningless arguments? Because if you have nothing more intelligent to add then I will not be replying to any more of your comments.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 25, @01:43PM
Is that what the kids these days call bringing insight to a discussion?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Saturday October 25, @06:59AM (1 child)
Balloon leaks and slowly loses bouyancy?
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 25, @01:46PM
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ChrisMaple on Saturday October 25, @07:03AM
The balloon's payload caused significant damage, and it apparently hit the edge of the window where it was well supported by the window frame. It's reasonable to believe that a hit in the center of the window would have been much more damaging, perhaps blowing clear through. At 520 mph, 1.2 kg is not lightweight, and the instrument package would be a fairly concentrated weight.
I hate to think of what might happen if one of these was in the way of an F-22 traveling at mach 2.
This event suggests that the FAA's requirements need to be changed. Perhaps a couple of ounces of foam around the instrument package would distribute the impact over a larger area and over a larger time span. If it isn't already, perhaps the balloon itself needs to be metal-coated to make it radar reflective. I haven't looked up the information, but the balloon has to be at least 4 feet in diameter, which ought to be enough for an appropriate radar to see it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Saturday October 25, @06:07PM (2 children)
Its an engineering tradeoff thing.
They're lighter than a bird so hitting one faster than a bird should be "OK ish"
One of their missions is providing data for aircraft so they kinda have to fly near and around airplanes (not directly in front ideally)
There are schemes to add a heavy radar transponder or add a heavy self-destruct system but they're heavy and some poor bastard will inevitably smash into a heavier balloon, regardless of increased complexity, causing more damage.
There's talk that given enough radio bandwidth to the ground, you could replace "a lot" of weather balloons with data from jetliners. Who's going to pay for the mods, who's going to be responsible when the weather package causes a problem, etc.
It happens rarely enough that its a major news story when a plane hits one and the damage was minimal. Its possible we're already at the local minima of risk for the current overall system design and this is the minimum level of damage.
It MIGHT be cheaper to cover the outside of the aircraft with 80 cameras feeding VR goggles and remove the stress concentrating brittle windows. Like many things I suspect the military will do it first. Windows, and the stress concentrations they cause, are not cheap; "Webcam" grade cameras and some fiber and some VR goggles are not as expensive as you'd think.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Sunday October 26, @12:13PM (1 child)
Birds don't fly at the altitudes where passenger jets cruise at. These planes travel much slower at bird altitude. The energy transferred drops as the square of speed. So traveling at half the speed means a quarter of the energy in the collision, for example. Further, if a cockpit were to get breached by bird strikes at low, breathable altitude, that's a far less lethal situation.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday October 26, @02:30PM
Agree completely but also have to scale the odds, where there's millions of times more birds at low altitude than high.
Thats what I mean about a local maxima of safety it might not be possible to improve overall. Every pound makes a short landing or emergency landing that much more dangerous so it might net kill more aviators to make a bird proof plane that unfortunately sinks like a rock during a common engine failure.
Possibly technology will save them... if they can put an entire low power low range reporting transponder into a balloon for the mass of a single microcontroller chip, then, maybe, the TCAS on the plane will detect and react and the pilot can steer around.