Windshield cracks on California-bound Delta flight

[Zee71]

Just came across this: http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?se...rld&id=7798319

"Delta Air Lines 737 jet bound for Southern California had to divert to Dallas-Fort Worth because of a cracked windshield. Delta Flight 1795 declared an emergency Thursday while en route from Atlanta to John Wayne Airport in Orange County."

[lijk604]

It was reported a crack and this serves to scare the public...as the media loves to do. However, it was most likely a de-lamination of the windshield. Aircraft windshields are not like car windshields, they are actually 2 panes of glass laminated together. When de-lamination occurs in flight you have to be concerned mostly about loss of cabin pressure...see Paine Stewart's Lear 35 crash for an example. Delta was doing the right thing and being cautious. Being they were going from ATL to SNA and they diverted to DFW....this did not happen at low altitudes, and looking at the track of the flight (http://flightaware.com/live/flight/D...600Z/KATL/KDFW) they did not do an emergency decent. Look at the profile, almost 40 mins from top of decent to landing, this was a routine approach to landing at DFW. I'm sure the O2 masks were not deployed nor was there a panic on anyones part. Just the media looking for another "hype" story.