A man was partially sucked out of a dislodged airplane window shortly after takeoff on a Ryanair flight from Greece to Germany, but nearby passengers pulled him back inside.
A Greek hospital official said the 61-year-old passenger was treated for neck and shoulder injuries and friction burns. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly to the media.
The July 10 flight from the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki to Memmingen near Munich was operated by Ryanair subsidiary Malta Air. Ryanair said the flight returned to Thessaloniki shortly after takeoff.
The airline said in a statement the plane landed normally and passengers returned to the terminal, and one passenger requested and received medical assistance on the ground in Thessaloniki. A replacement aircraft was later provided to fly the passengers to Germany.
Passengers told Greek media that they heard a loud bang, oxygen masks dropped and the plane began to lose altitude.
One passenger, identified only as Christina, told Thessaloniki radio that passengers panicked and screamed and that one passenger was partially sucked out of the window.
“His whole head, neck, shoulders” were pulled out of the window, she said, adding that those seated near him pulled him back in.
“Most people had fallen asleep, we had closed our eyes. We heard a sound, I’d describe it like a tire bursting, … but very loud,” she said. “We knew straight away we lost pressure because we lost altitude. … Screams, shrieks, shouting.”
The aircraft was a Boeing 737-800, which can seat up to 189 passengers. The narrow-body plane was delivered new to Ryanair in 2008, according to flight-tracking site Flightradar24.
The airline has not said what caused the window to dislodge, but the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said it was notified that the flight turned back because of “a right engine issue and cabin decompression.”
About six minutes after departure, flight records show, the aircraft climbed past 15,000 feet (4,570 metres), then immediately descended to about 6,000 feet (1,830 metres) “to burn fuel for 30 minutes” before returning to Thessaloniki about an hour after takeoff, Flightradar24 said.
Shye Gilad, a former airline pilot who teaches at Georgetown University’s business school in the United States, said the incident underscored the importance of keeping seatbelts fastened while seated. A rapid decompression can create a brief but powerful suction effect near a breach in the cabin before the cabin’s pressure stabilizes, he said.
“The seatbelt can help in those first few seconds. It’s a difference maker and people should keep their seatbelts fastened at all times,” Gilad said, adding that events such as Friday’s incident are “a very rare” because “it takes a lot to breach a cabin.”
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