Passenger hospitalised after being partially sucked out of window on Ryanair flight from Greece
A Ryanair plane sits on the tarmac at Thessaloniki Airport. (Reuters: File/Alexandros Avramidis)
In short:
A Serbian man has been hospitalised after he was partially sucked through the dislodged window of a Boeing 737 shortly after take-off from Thessaloniki in Greece.
The man's head and shoulders were reportedly outside the plane before passengers on the budget Ryanair flight were able to pull him back in.
What's next?
Boeing says it is assisting an investigation into the incident, which occurred over North Macedonia before the plane turned back to land in Greece.
A passenger was partially sucked through a dislodged window on a Ryanair flight shortly after taking off from Greece on Friday, forcing the aircraft to make an emergency landing.
The plane, a Boeing 737, was scheduled to fly from Thessaloniki to Memmingen in Germany, but returned to Thessaloniki after "a passenger window dislodged in-flight", the budget airline said in a statement.
It is unclear what caused the window to break.
The Serbian national, who was partially sucked through the window, was transferred to Thessaloniki's AHEPA University General Hospital, but had not sustained life-threatening injuries, the Serbian consulate said.
Serbian media quoted a passenger telling Radio Thessaloniki that the man's head and shoulders were outside the aircraft before fellow passengers pulled him back in.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed the plane was a Boeing 737 NG — the version before the current MAX generation of 737 planes.
Boeing said it was assisting the investigation, which is being led by North Macedonia because the incident occurred in its airspace.
"We remain in contact with and continue to support our customer, Ryanair," the company said.
Ryanair, an Irish budget airline, did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment on details of the incident, as well as for confirmation on the make of the plane and the engine.
"The aircraft landed normally and passengers returned to the terminal," Ryanair said in its statement.
Local media in Greece reported that a piece of engine broke off and smashed a window early in the flight, causing the cabin to decompress.
Two airport sources with knowledge of the incident relayed the same details to the Reuters news agency.
A video posted on social media appeared to show an uncontained engine failure on the damaged Boeing 737, with fan blades missing.
The dislodged window on the Boeing 737 NG plane that returned to Thessaloniki on Friday. (Supplied: RThess)
Such a failure occurs when internal components like fan blades shatter and breach the casing, sending debris flying.
The same plane had diverted back to Thessaloniki on a flight to Sarajevo on Thursday evening, also shortly after take-off, according to FlightRadar24 data, although it is unclear why.
Ryanair uses CFM56 engines from manufacturer CFM International on all of its Boeing 737 NG models.
CFM, a joint venture between General Electric and France's Safran SA did not respond to a request for comment.
Similar incident in 2018
A similar incident occurred in 2018 on another Boeing 737 NG, in which a snapped engine fan blade caused a broken window that partially sucked out a passenger on a Southwest Airlines flight.
The 43-year-old died from their injuries, becoming the first person killed in a US passenger airline accident in nine years.
After that incident, the US National Transportation Safety Board called on Boeing to redesign the fan cowl structure on 737 NG planes.
The FAA issued a directive in 2023 requiring the Boeing redesign to take place by July 2028.
Tammie Jo Shults, who won accolades for her cool demeanour while flying that Southwest Airlines flight, said on Friday she was surprised by some of the similarities.
"They have an engine that goes out. There is external damage. It's not just an engine that has quit working, and so there's more drag with that," she said.
Reuters
