On the Fourth of July, a Delta jet coming in to land at Chicago's Midway made contact with a firework. The pilots felt it, radioed the tower, and kept flying.
"Tower, we just had a firework hit our plane, Delta 1076, we're continuing," the crew told air traffic control, according to radio audio captured after the incident. They added they'd "look at it when we get to the gate," and that they were "just hoping it was just a mortar that went off underneath, but definitely felt a big bang."
That's the whole event, and it's worth being precise about it, because the viral version travels as "Delta plane STRUCK BY FIREWORKS." Delta Flight 1076 landed safely at 8:38 p.m. CT. There was no emergency landing. The crew's own words were a calm plan to check the aircraft at the gate, not a mayday.
What actually happened
Flight 1076 left Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson at 7:36 p.m. ET and touched down at Midway roughly an hour later, per FlightAware tracking. Somewhere on the approach, a firework reached the plane. The aircraft was put through an evaluation after it parked. [1]
How is a passenger jet even in firework range? Midway sits inside a dense residential grid on Chicago's Southwest Side, and consumer mortars can climb a few hundred feet — right into the low, slow final approach corridor. On the single night of the year when thousands of them go up at once across those neighborhoods, a plane descending over rooftops and a shell going off are briefly sharing the same airspace.
The story spread fast on July 5, picked up by aviation accounts and even the prediction market Polymarket, which posted a "BREAKING" note that the flight "reportedly struck a firework on the 4th of July, but landed safely." [2] Every version, including the breathless ones, ends with those two words: landed safely. [3]
What's still unconfirmed is whether the firework left any actual damage. Delta said the plane was being evaluated after arrival, and no findings had been released.
Sources
Primary source: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport
- Tweet by @Breaking911 — @Breaking911 · community
- Tweet by @Polymarket — @Polymarket · community
- Tweet by @aviationbrk — @aviationbrk · community