Man partially sucked out of plane window during flight, passenger says

Thessaloniki, Greece — A man was nearly sucked out the window of a Ryanair flight when it “detached” mid-air en route to Germany, with other passengers pulling him back inside, a witness told Greek media on Friday.

The passenger, described as a tourist from Serbia on a flight from Thessaloniki in Greece to Memmingen in Germany, was hospitalized with friction burns but was otherwise in good condition, authorities said.

“Most of us had fallen asleep, we had closed our eyes. There was a noise, like a tire bursting,” a fellow passenger told Radio Thessaloniki.

“We immediately realized there had been a decompression. There were screams … for a moment I thought someone had accidentally opened the emergency door,” the woman said. “The masks dropped and there was a strong smell. The head and shoulders of one passenger were outside the window. Fortunately, he hadn’t taken off his seat belt.”

Other passengers near the man helped to pull him in, she said.

Video circulating on social media, which CBS News could not independently verify, purportedly showed the inside of the plane after the incident, with a broken window and oxygen masks hanging from the ceiling, but no passengers visible.   

A woman died in a similar sounding incident in the U.S. in 2018, and an aviation expert told CBS News at the time that it is possible for a person to be sucked out of a plane window in flight if they aren’t wearing a seatbelt, due to the “incredible amount of pressure trying to rush out of that small opening.”

Greek media reported the incident had occurred over North Macedonia, and said the window had been broken by a piece of debris that detached from one of the plane’s engines.

Ryanair said in a statement that the flight “returned to Thessaloniki shortly after takeoff when a passenger window detached during the flight. The aircraft landed normally and the passengers returned to the terminal.”

A replacement aircraft was made available to transport the remaining passengers to Memmingen, the Irish carrier said.