Ljubisa Karović was on a Ryanair-Air Malta flight leaving Thessaloniki in Greece when the adjacent window blew out of the Boeing 737-800, pulling his head and shoulders out of the plane. His wife and fellow passengers helped to keep him inside.
What caused the window to blow out?
Investigators have not confirmed the details, but according to passenger reports the window broke after being struck by debris following failure of the right engine at about 16,000ft. Ryanair said the flight “returned to Thessaloniki shortly after takeoff when a passenger window dislodged inflight”. The incident took place over North Macedonia, where authorities said the plane had turned around “due to a right engine issue and cabin decompression”
Why was he not sucked out completely?
Passengers told reporters that Karović had his seatbelt on which would have helped enormously. But other factors contributed. Airliners have small windows and an adult body could physically block the hole when a window blows. The most severe suction is also relatively short-lived. “The airflow is sudden and will stop once the pressure inside the cabin is same as the pressure outside,” said Dr Jason Knight, senior lecturer in fluid mechanics at the University of Portsmouth.
How common is this kind of incident?
It is extremely rare – but unfortunately not unprecedented. The last known time a passenger was partially sucked out of a broken window – or technically, blown out, with the relative force of the cabin pressure – was in 2018 on a Southwest Airlines flight travelling from New York to Dallas. Despite being hauled back into the plane by other passengers, Jennifer Riordan died.
Although the exact details of last week’s Ryanair incident remain unconfirmed, early reports suggest that parts of a damaged engine broke the window. Footage posted online appears to show a missing fan blade. The fatal Southwest incident occurred on a similar Boeing 737 model with jet engines made by CFM, where a fan blade broke off and shattered the window.
An entire door panel blew out of a Boeing 737-Max in an Alaska Air flight in 2024, but luckily the adjacent seats were unoccupied.
Otherwise, pilots have come the closest to being sucked out of modern planes through shattered cockpit windshields.
Is surviving such an incident a miracle?
In recent events, most appear to have survived. Karović is being treated for injuries and trauma in hospital. His wife said he had been bleeding from the nose and mouth, had a badly damaged hand and suffered friction burns in the ordeal.
A Sichuan Airlines co-pilot suffered only a broken wrist after going partly through a window of an Airbus A319 in China, only weeks after the Southwest incident in 2018.
In 1990, a British Airways pilot was held in by his legs for 20 minutes after a windshield panel blew soon after takeoff, remarkably surviving when his colleagues believed him to be dead. The pilot did suffer severe injuries and psychological harm.
“Hypoxia is one risk, the other is physical trauma, and the other is psychological trauma, because it is a profoundly shocking event,” said Dr Simon Bennett, a pilot and director of the civil safety and security unit at University of Leicester. “But one can survive.”
Who is most at risk when a window blows?
People who are close to the window and not wearing a seatbelt are most at risk, especially if they are small enough to pass through it easily. Those in the rows in front and behind tend to be protected by the seats. “The maximum speed of airflow is through the window itself, so anybody close to the window that could fit through the window is at risk, but these incidents are very rare,” said Knight. “The doors are much bigger than windows so anybody close to a door would be at risk, but again this would be a very rare incident.”
How dangerous can these incidents be?
Planes are designed to withstand a window blowing out, but the sudden loss of pressure can still cause serious problems if the plane is old or has not been well maintained. Old airframes can accumulate multiple minor fractures that become a major weakness when the fuselage is shocked. “If it had been an ancient airframe, one that was 25, 30 years old, that could have triggered other latent failures and you could have had an explosive decompression and the whole aircraft could have been lost in seconds,” Bennet said. “The entire fuselage can rupture.”
Why do these accidents happen?
It will take a formal investigation to understand what happened on the Malta Air flight, but Bennett is worried about the “exponential” rise in airlines contracting out manufacturing and maintenance. “What history teaches us is that the weak point here is maintenance. Subcontracting makes quality control more difficult. It’s more difficult to quality control a dispersed system.”
What is the best strategy – and what should people do if a window blows?
The only obvious guard, if worth taking against such an extraordinary but extreme event, appears to be wearing a seatbelt and avoiding the window seats, especially those in the rows next to or just behind the engine. The exact window that shattered on the Ryanairflight is not confirmed but appears to have been around seats 12F, 14F or 15F.
Once the immediate explosion decompression has occurred, the risk of others being forced out if assisting is low. But, the experts say, it is best to listen to the flight crew: “The people on the flight deck and in the cabin are consummate professionals, so follow their advice to the letter,” said Bennett. “Don’t get blase. When a cabin crew member stands in front of you before takeoff and shows you how to put a lifejacket on, bloody well listen.”