There were 165 passengers on board the Boeing 757-200, which landed safely in Denver.
A United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Boston was diverted to Denver after passengers spotted that parts of the plane's wing were damaged, CBS News reported. The incident happened on Monday when a passenger Kevin Clark first noticed the right wing coming apart on the plane.
''All of a sudden, I heard this incredible metallic vibration I've never heard before. I woke right up and I went, what is that?'' Mr Clarke said. He then opened his window shade and took a video of the damage. After a while, one of the pilots walked down the aisle, looked out the window, and went back to the cockpit.
''Minutes later, he comes on the PA system and announces that we've sustained some damage to the slat underneath the wing,'' Mr Clarke said. The plane was then rerouted to Denver where it successfully landed.
The passenger's wife shared the video on Facebook and wrote,'' My husband Kevin's United Flight from San Francisco to Boston just made an emergency landing in Denver. The wing was coming apart in the air! Everyone is safe thank God.'' The video showed a chipped plane wing with a dark blue tip descending onto a runway.
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Another passenger also shared a photo of the wing on Reddit mid-flight. The photo showed a plane wing, midair, with part of its slat chipped. He wrote, ''Sitting right on the wing and the noise after reaching altitude was much louder than normal. I opened the window to see the wing looking like this. How panicked should I be?''
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United said Tuesday that the Boeing 757-200 with 165 passengers aboard landed in Denver on Monday to ''address an issue with the slat'' on one of its wings.
Passengers were later put on a different plane and arrived later in the day in Boston.
'United Flight 354 diverted to Denver yesterday afternoon to address an issue with the slat on the wing of the aircraft. The flight landed safely and we arranged for another aircraft to take our customers to Boston,'' a spokesperson for United told WBZ-TV in a statement.
However, the airline did not say what caused the damage to the plane's wing.
The incident comes after last month's blowout of a door panel on an Alaska Airlines jetliner flying over Oregon. Fortunately, all passengers and crew were safe when the aircraft eventually landed.