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Source: Reuters
An Air New Zealand flight to Cairns from Auckland was diverted to Brisbane on Sunday because of a cracked windscreen.
Australian Transport Safety Bureau engineers and investigators will examine the windscreen and prepare an initial report on the incident later on Monday , ABC News in Australia reported.
Passenger Ruby Boussard, from Cairns, said there was no panic on board when the plane plummeted momentarily after its windscreen cracked mid-flight.
"There was a moment when the aeroplane suddenly slowed down and we lost a lot of altitude," passenger Ruby Boussard told ABC Radio.
"The seat (belt) light came on. The air hostesses were very firm in telling us to go back to our place and put the rubbish away and clear the path."
She said it was another 40 minutes before the plane landed in Brisbane.
"We saw the windscreen when we left the aeroplane - they let us have a look out the front and it looked like an enormous slug trail across the windscreen with a Y shape.
"It was a fairly scary looking crack, that's for sure."
However Air has denied that the plane made a rapid descent after the crack developed.
A spokeswoman for Air NZ says the crack developed in one of the windows on the pilot's side of the cockpit.
The window was more than 4cm thick and made up of three separate panes of glass. The crack was on the inside pane only which in no way risked the integrity of the windscreen, she said.
The pilot followed standard operating procedure and reduced altitude and diverted to nearby Brisbane airport, she says.
"Contrary to reports in some media, the pilots followed a standard descent profile as an aircraft would preparing to land, gradually descending from approximately 34,000ft to 23,000ft over a period of seven minutes."
The 118 passengers put up in Brisbane hotels overnight and were being flown to Cairns today.
A replacement screen was fitted and the aircraft was now back in service.
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