A United Airlines regional jet with 72 people aboard was forced to make an emergency return to Houston Sunday after the windshield glass shattered shortly after takeoff, sending pieces of glass into the cockpit, according to officials and air traffic control recordings.

“We just had our glass break,” a pilot of the El Paso-bound flight, operated by Mesa Airlines, radioed air traffic control, according to audio captured by ATC.com.

“We’ll declare an emergency, sir. It looks like the glass busted completely through, it’s just not a layer,” he said.

The pilots told air traffic controllers they were stopping their climb and slowing the plane down because glass was falling inside the cockpit.

No one was injured, and the Embraer E175 landed back at George Bush Intercontinental Airport around 1 p.m., the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.

The FAA will investigate. Airplane windshields are composed of multiple layers of tempered glass and other materials, the agency noted in the statement.

“The first officer’s windshield shattered shortly after takeoff and while there was no depressurization, standard procedure in such cases are to return to field,” a Mesa Airlines spokesperson told CNN.

The flight had originally departed George Bush Intercontinental Airport around 12:20 p.m., traveling northwest, before it was forced to turn around, according to flight tracking site Flightradar24.

The Houston Fire Department responded to the incident and later declared the aircraft safe, the airport told CNN in a statement.

The Mesa spokesperson said passengers were transferred to a replacement aircraft to continue their trip, which later landed in El Paso at 3:14 p.m., Flightradar24 showed.