A man was nearly sucked out of a plane before being held by other passengers after a window came loose on a Ryanair flight from Thessaloniki, Greece, witnesses and authorities said Friday.
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“A passenger’s head and shoulders were outside the window,” a passenger on the same flight told local radio station Radio Thessaloniki. “Luckily he hadn’t taken his seat belt off.”
Other passengers near the man helped pull him inside, she added.
A “passenger window detached in flight”, “shortly after takeoff”, indicated the airline Ryanair.
According to Greek media, the plane was a Boeing 737-800 and the window was broken by debris that broke off from one of the plane’s engines.
The victim, believed to be a Serbian tourist, was hospitalized Friday in Thessaloniki for friction burns but his condition does not otherwise cause concern, according to the authorities.
The flight was bound for Memmingen, Germany, according to the same source.
“Most of us had fallen asleep, we closed our eyes. There was a noise, like a tire bursting,” the passenger said.
“We immediately understood that there had been a decompression. Screams were heard (…) For a moment, I thought someone had opened the emergency door by accident,” the woman said.
“The masks fell off and there was a strong smell,” she also said.
According to Greek media, the incident occurred over North Macedonia.
In a press release, Ryanair assured that the plane “returned to Thessaloniki shortly after takeoff when a passenger window came loose in flight. The aircraft landed normally and the passengers returned to the terminal.”
The company said a replacement plane had been made available to transport passengers to Memmingen.
