A passenger was nearly sucked out of a window opening on a Ryanair flight Friday morning after the windowpane near his seat detached in mid-air.
Other travelers on board the flight, which was heading from Thessaloniki, Greece, to Memmingen, Germany, told media outlets that the man’s head and shoulders were briefly outside the aircraft fuselage. His seatbelt kept him in place, however, and other passengers nearby helped pull him fully back inside the cabin.
Their statements could not be independently verified as of Friday. Ryanair said only that the flight returned to Thessaloniki after a “passenger window detached.”
“The aircraft landed normally and the passengers returned to the terminal,” the carrier said in a statement.
Ryanair did not mention any injuries to passengers or the crew, though some outlets, including CBS News, reported that the man who was partially pulled out of the window was hospitalized in Greece for friction burns.
FlightAware shows that Ryanair uses a Boeing 737-800 on its Thessaloniki-Memmingen connection.
According to some Greek media sources, a piece of the aircraft’s engine broke off and smashed into the window, causing a cabin decompression event. Neither Ryanair nor authorities in Greece have confirmed this.
If the account of engine failure is accurate, it would closely mirror a 2018 episode in which a woman was partially sucked out of a Southwest flight. Fragments from an engine cowl burst a cabin window, resulting in explosive decompression. The woman was pulled back inside the aircraft by flight attendants and other passengers but died of blunt force trauma.
