A 61-year-old Serbian tourist was nearly sucked out of a Ryanair flight after a piece of engine debris broke loose and shattered a cabin window mid-climb. The harrowing incident occurred aboard flight FR1879, a Boeing 737-8AS operated by Ryanair subsidiary Malta Air, which was traveling from Thessaloniki, Greece, to Memmingen, Germany.
Passengers reported being startled awake by a loud blast, describing it as the sound of a tire bursting, followed immediately by rapid cabin decompression and dropping oxygen masks. Witnesses discovered the Serbian passenger with his head and shoulders pulled completely outside the aircraft through the shattered window frame.
A Life-Saving Intervention
A fellow traveler speaking to Radio Thessaloniki recalled the chaotic moments following the decompression: “There were screams… for a moment I thought someone had accidentally opened the emergency door. The masks dropped, and there was a strong smell. The head and shoulders of one passenger were outside the window.”
The victim survived the terrifying ordeal primarily because he was still wearing his seat belt, which anchored him to his seat. His wife desperately held onto his legs to prevent him from slipping further into the 400 mph slipstream, while nearby passengers acted quickly to pull him back inside the cabin. He was later hospitalized with shock and friction burns from the freezing high-altitude air but was reported to be in stable condition.
Emergency U-Turn
The mid-air failure happened while the aircraft was climbing through approximately 16,000 feet over North Macedonia. In an official statement, Ryanair confirmed that the flight safely pulled a U-turn and “returned to Thessaloniki shortly after takeoff when a passenger window detached during the flight.” The airline added that the aircraft landed normally, emergency services were put on standby, and a replacement aircraft was arranged to transport the remaining passengers to Germany later that morning.
