A passenger on a Ryanair flight was reportedly almost sucked out of a window after it shattered in mid-air during a journey from Greece.
The man was said to have been sucked out of his seat into the plane’s slipstream and hung headfirst out of the window after an engine failure resulted in parts smashing the acrylic window, according to local reports.
The passenger, said to be a 61-year-old Serbian, was saved from being completely sucked out of the Boeing 737 because his wife “held him by the legs”.
The incident took place on Ryanair flight FR1879, which was scheduled to fly from Thessaloniki in Greece to Memmingen near Munich in Germany on Thursday. It was operated by the Ryanair subsidiary, Malta Air.
Michalis Giannakos, a trade union official, said the man was taken to hospital suffering from shock and friction burns from the freezing wind outside the airliner, according to the Greek news website Newsit.
The president of the Panhellenic Federation of Public Hospital Employees (POEDIN) said the incident was “almost a tragedy”.
Images and videos show that the shattered window caused oxygen masks to drop from the ceiling as the broken window caused a depressurisation of the cabin.
Data from the website of the tracking company FlightRadar24 indicates that the flight was airborne for just over an hour, and reached 16,000ft before descending into Thessaloniki airport.
A Ryanair spokesperson said: “A Ryanair flight from Thessaloniki to Memmingen on Friday morning returned to Thessaloniki shortly after takeoff when a passenger window dislodged inflight.
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“The aircraft landed normally and passengers returned to the terminal. One passenger requested and received medical assistance on the ground in Thessaloniki.
“In order to minimise any delay, a replacement aircraft was arranged to bring passengers to Memmingen, which departed Thessaloniki at 9:53am local time this morning.”