A passenger aboard a Ryanair flight was nearly pulled through an acrylic window after it shattered mid-air during a journey departing from Greece. According to local reports, the man was lifted from his seat into the aircraft’s slipstream and hung headfirst out of the broken window following an engine failure that caused debris to strike the pane. The incident occurred on flight FR1879, which was traveling from Thessaloniki, Greece, to Memmingen, Germany, on Friday.
The flight was operated by Malta Air, a subsidiary of the budget airline. Data from the tracking service FlightRadar24 shows the aircraft had been airborne for just over an hour and reached an altitude of 16,000 feet before it was forced to descend back to Thessaloniki airport. Images and video footage from the scene depict oxygen masks deployed from the cabin ceiling as a result of the depressurization.
Michalis Giannakos, an official with the Panhellenic Federation of Public Hospital Employees, described the event as “almost a tragedy.” He reported that the passenger was transported to a hospital to be treated for shock and friction burns caused by the freezing wind outside the airliner, according to the Greek news website Newsit. A Ryanair spokesperson confirmed that the flight returned to Thessaloniki shortly after takeoff due to the window dislodging. The airline stated that the aircraft landed normally and passengers were returned to the terminal, with one individual receiving medical assistance on the ground. A replacement aircraft was arranged to minimize delays, departing for Memmingen at 9:53 a.m. local time.
This incident follows a separate major aviation event in 2024, when a cabin panel blew out on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9. During that flight, which carried over 170 passengers and six crew members, a shirt was ripped off a young boy and sucked out of the plane while his mother held onto him. Investigators later determined that four door bolts intended to secure the door plug had been removed during construction and were never reinstalled. That flight, traveling at 400mph, resulted in minor injuries to seven passengers and one flight attendant.
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.
