Passenger has ‘mini anxiety attack’ when he spots crack in plane window

Travellers’ Tiktok video goes viral

A passenger was left feeling panicky after he discovered a large crack in the aircraft window on a recent flight.

Karl Haddad was flying from Toronto to Montreal with Air Canada on the last leg of a 27-hour journey from Lebanon when the incident occurred.

He fell asleep but woke up after 30 minutes and immediately spotted a problem.

The 20-year-old dancer and choreographer filmed the experience and shared it on Tiktok, videoing the visible damage to the window.

“My plane window broke for some reason,” he captioned the footage.

“So I called the host, who then called the captain. They decided to force landing.

“Mini anxiety attack.”

The video shows Haddad pushing the window, with the entire frame appearing to move as he does so.

Although he refers to a “forced landing”, the plane in fact landed as planned in Montreal.

After Haddad told a flight attendant, a pilot came to assess the damage and said that, as it only affected the inner layer of the window, it wasn’t urgent.

The other passengers onboard were not notified of the issue.

Haddad described the pilot as “professional” and said he handled the situation well.

The Tiktok video quickly went viral, with more than 500,000 likes and thousands of comments.

Despite the visible crack, passengers onboard Haddad’s flight were never in any danger. The inner part of the window – or the window insert – on a commercial aircraft is purely cosmetic.

According to aviation site The Points Guy, “the window pane that you rest your head against, and can actually touch, does practically nothing besides provide a movable window shade.”

Windows usually have three layers, with the middle and outer panes doing the heavy lifting of balancing the different air pressures that exist inside and outside the plane.

“The part in question is a window blind frame assembly where the window blind slides up and down,” an Air Canada spokesperson told Buzzfeed.

“This is a plastic part of the trim around the window and not a critical structural part.”