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Report: Window dislodges on Ryanair Boeing 737, passenger nearly sucked out of plane
byKOMO News Staff
Fri, July 10, 2026 at 7:06 AM
Updated Fri, July 10, 2026 at 5:09 PM
In this file photo, a Ryanair jet lands at Stansted airport February 4, 2003, in London. (Photo by Ian Waldie/Getty Images)
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topics:
- Ryanair
- Boeing 737
- Decompression
- Window failure
- Emergency landing
- Passenger injury
- Serbian citizen
- Greece
Passengers on a Ryanair Boeing 737 faced a frightening midair emergency when a window dislodged, and a passenger was partially sucked out of the plane.
The incident happened shortly after taking off from Greece on Friday when the window dislodged at about 13,000 feet, about 10 minutes into the flight.
Video from the flight shows oxygen masks dropping as the aircraft experienced decompression.
"Witnesses told local media the man, said to be a Serbian citizen in his 60s, was left hanging head first out of the window as far as his shoulders for several minutes, before other passengers on the flight managed to pull him back inside," the BBC reported.
ABC reported that other passengers had to hold someone's feet to keep him from getting sucked out of the broken window.
The pilot descended to 6,000 feet until the jet could land.
Ryanair confirmed one person, a Serbian citizen, needed medical care after the jet landed safely.
The airline released a statement about the incident.
A Ryanair flight from Thessaloniki to Memmingen on Friday morning (10 July) returned to Thessaloniki shortly after take-off 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 9:53 local this morning.
The Boeing 737 is built in Renton.
"We are aware of the incident involving flight FR1879 and are in contact with Ryanair," Boeing said in a statement.
Scott Hamilton, an author and aviation industry analysts said that while such incidents are extremely rare, it has happened before.
A Southwest Airlines flight in 2018 suffered a similar issue near Philadelphia when an engine blade failure created debris mid-flight that shattered a window. In that case, a passenger was also partially sucked out and ended up dying.
Hamilton said that while it’s in the very early stages of the investigation, he thinks an initial focus will be to determine why this engine blade separated from the front fan.
“Why did the blade go through the cowling because the cowling is there to contain a blade in that situation,” Hamilton said. “Was there metal fatigue on the blade or was there pre-existing undetected damage to that, or did something happen? Was there some foreign object or debris ingested on takeoff?”
Maintenance records will also be key, Hamilton said, but design flaws sometimes surface years later that also need to be considered.
“Sometimes these have a root cause that go way back and that's what the investigation is going to reveal,” Hamilton said.
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