Ryanair passenger almost sucked out of shattered window during flight

Serbian man reportedly saved by wife hanging on to his legs after window shattered on journey from Greece

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 lifted 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, reportedly 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 Friday. It was operated by the the budget airline’s 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 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 cabin became depressurised.

Data from the website of the tracking company FlightRadar24 indicates 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.

“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.”

In 2024, a cabin panel on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 blew out mid-flight. The plane, carrying more than 170 passengers and six crew, was forced to make an emergency landing.

One passenger said that he saw the shirt ripped off a boy and sucked out of the plane as his mother held on to him, while two seats directly next to the gaping hole in the fuselage were luckily unoccupied.

Another passenger, who was sitting right behind the door plug that blew out, was saved by his seatbelt as the force of the air rushing out of the hole tore off his socks, a shoe and sucked away his iPhone.

In testimony to investigators, a co-pilot of the plane said there was “chaos”, with the blowout as the plane travelled at 400mph that it ripped off the cockpit door and tore off his headset. Seven passengers and one flight attendant suffered minor injuries.

The final report into the incident, released last year, confirmed that four door bolts which secured the door plug had been removed for rivet work when the jet was being built . However, when the door plug was put back in the bolts were not reinstalled.

• This article was amended on 10 July 2026. The incident happened on Friday, not Thursday as stated in an earlier version.