WindBorne CEO says its weather balloon may have struck United 737 MAX, not space debris

Scott Manley will be happy to know this.

Of course, he is not celebrating the collision, but he speculated that something like a weather balloon was more likely than space debris.

https://youtu.be/J84ywJ1advw?si=GHDnbywK-EN-BxBN

Here’s also a blog post from the company, more about how to prevent this in the future:

[https://windbornesystems.com/blog/ua-1093](https://windbornesystems.com/blog/ua-1093)

It’s my impression from the Windborn statement that the company was the first to suspect their balloons involvement , research it and contact the authorities. If true, then respect to them.

Weather balloons do not strike airplanes. This title is misleading And all air traffic essentially yields to balloons in the sense that the balloon has flight path priority and the plane must avoid it. There is one exception with an aircraft in distress, but that scenario sounds like a ship yelling at a lighthouse.

Given which one would have been relatively stationary, would it not be that the weather balloon got hit by the aircraft?

I am pretty sure it struck the payload under the balloon, not the ballon.