A passenger on a Ryanair flight was reportedly almost sucked out of a window after it shattered in mid-air during a journey from Greece. The man, a 61-year-old Serbian, was said to have been lifted out of his seat into the plane’s slipstream and hung headfirst out of the window after an engine failure resulted in parts smashing the acrylic window, according to local reports.
The passenger was saved from being completely sucked out of the Boeing 737 because his wife “held him by the legs,” according to Michalis Giannakos, a trade union official. Giannakos told the Greek news website Newsit that the man was taken to hospital suffering from shock and friction burns from the freezing wind outside the airliner.
Incident Details
The incident took place on Ryanair flight FR1879, which was scheduled to fly from Thessaloniki in Greece to Memmingen near Munich in Germany on Friday. The flight was operated by the budget airline’s subsidiary Malta Air. The president of the Panhellenic Federation of Public Hospital Employees described the incident as “almost a tragedy.”
Images and videos show that the shattered window caused oxygen masks to drop from the ceiling as the cabin became depressurised. Data from FlightRadar24 indicates the flight was airborne for just over an hour and reached 16,000 feet before descending back into Thessaloniki airport.
Ryanair Statement
A Ryanair spokesperson said: “A Ryanair flight from Thessaloniki to Memmingen on Friday morning returned to Thessaloniki shortly after takeoff when a passenger window dislodged inflight. The aircraft landed normally and passengers returned to the terminal. One passenger requested and received medical assistance on the ground in Thessaloniki. In order to minimise any delay, a replacement aircraft was arranged to bring passengers to Memmingen, which departed Thessaloniki at 9.53am local time this morning.”
Comparison to Previous Incident
In 2024, a cabin panel on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 blew out mid-flight. The plane, carrying more than 170 passengers and six crew, was forced to make an emergency landing. One passenger said that he saw the shirt ripped off a boy and sucked out of the plane as his mother held on to him, while two seats directly next to the gaping hole in the fuselage were luckily unoccupied. Another passenger, sitting right behind the door plug that blew out, was saved by his seatbelt as the force of the air rushing out tore off his socks, a shoe and sucked away his iPhone.
In testimony to investigators, a co-pilot of the plane said there was “chaos,” with the blowout at 400 mph ripping off the cockpit door and tearing off his headset. Seven passengers and one flight attendant suffered minor injuries. The final report into the incident, released last year, confirmed that four door bolts securing the door plug had been removed for rivet work when the jet was being built, but were not reinstalled when the door plug was put back.
