THESSALONIKI, Greece — A passenger aboard a Ryanair flight from Greece to Germany was hospitalized Friday after being partially pulled through a window that broke shortly after takeoff.
A Greek hospital official said the 61-year-old man was treated for neck and shoulder injuries and friction burns. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, lacking authorization to speak publicly to the media.
The Friday morning flight departed from Thessaloniki in northern Greece and was bound for Memmingen near Munich. It was operated by Malta Air, a Ryanair subsidiary. Ryanair said the flight “returned to Thessaloniki shortly after takeoff when a passenger window dislodged in-flight.”
A doctor said his wife gripped her husband’s feet for several minutes to keep him inside the aircraft, according to ABC News. The man remained in intensive care in Greece on Friday.
A senior Greek aviation official told ABC News the incident began with an engine failure. Parts of the engine struck the fuselage, shattering the window, the official said.
Ryanair has not addressed the cause. The airline said 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 later carried the passengers to Germany.
Passengers told Greek media they heard a loud bang, oxygen masks dropped and the plane began losing altitude.
One passenger, identified only as Christina, told Thessaloniki radio that passengers panicked and screamed, and that one person was partially pulled through the window.
“His whole head, neck, shoulders” were pulled outside the aircraft, 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.”
Among the questions officials said they were working to clarify was whether the passenger was wearing his seatbelt when the window shattered.
The aircraft was a Boeing 737-800, a narrow-body plane that can seat up to 189 passengers. It was delivered new to Ryanair in 2008, according to flight-tracking site Flightradar24.
About six minutes after departure, flight records show, the aircraft climbed past 15,000 feet (4,570 meters) before immediately descending to about 6,000 feet (1,830 meters) to burn fuel for roughly 30 minutes. The plane returned to Thessaloniki about an hour after takeoff, Flightradar24 said.
The incident echoes a Southwest Airlines flight eight years ago that made an emergency landing in Philadelphia.
That flight was traveling from New York’s LaGuardia Airport to Dallas when part of the Boeing plane’s engine exploded due to metal fatigue, according to the NTSB report. The blast shattered a window and killed a passenger who was partially pulled from the aircraft.
The Federal Aviation Administration immediately ordered inspections of similar aircraft. The NTSB’s findings later prompted Boeing to redesign parts of its engine panels.
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