Passenger ‘nearly sucked out of window mid-air’ on Ryanair plane
A passenger on a Ryanair flight was reportedly nearly pulled out of the cabin window.
Eyewitnesses told local media that the man, said to be a Serbian national in his 60s, left his head hanging out of the window up to his shoulders for several minutes until other passengers on the plane managed to pull him inside.
Ryanair said in a statement that its flight from Thessaloniki, Greece, to Memmingen, Germany, on Friday morning was turned back “shortly after take-off due to a passenger window becoming dislodged in flight”.
He continued: “The plane landed normally and the passengers returned to the terminal. One passenger requested and received medical assistance on the ground in Thessaloniki.”
The Irish budget airline added that a few hours later “a replacement aircraft had been arranged to bring passengers to Memmingen”.
Media reports in Greece and Germany stated that passengers described windows breaking and oxygen masks falling from the ceiling following a violent explosion shortly after the Boeing 737 took off.
Although Ryanair has not commented on this, they believe the window was broken by parts of the jet engine.
One of the passengers, Christina, told Radio Thessaloniki: “We immediately noticed that there was a loss of pressure. Screams were heard… For a moment I thought someone had accidentally opened the emergency door.”
“The masks fell off and a strong odor was released. The head and shoulders of one of the passengers were outside the window. Fortunately, he had not removed his seat belt.”
The plane, thought to be 18 years old, was operated by Ryanair subsidiary Malta Air.
The Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) later told the BBC it was “aware of the incident involving a Ryanair group aircraft registered and operated by Malta Air, which departed Thessaloniki this morning”.
“The IAA will provide any assistance requested to the aviation safety investigative authority in Greece and the Malta Civil Aviation Authority to assist with their investigations,” he said.
In 2018, a passenger died and was partially airborne when debris from a damaged engine caused the window to break on a Southwest Airlines plane in the United States.
