A Ryanair passenger on board the flight bound for Memmingen, Germany, from Thessaloniki, Greece, has a near-death experience after being sucked through the plane’s broken window. Other passengers dragged him inside.
The horrific incident occurred on Friday, July 10, when the window of a Ryanair flight broke off into the air. The passenger, a Serbian tourist, suffered friction burns, but fortunately did not suffer serious life-threatening injuries.
In an interview with Radio Thessaloniki, a fellow traveler described the situation. He said: “Most of us had fallen asleep, we closed our eyes. There was a noise, like a tire bursting.”
The witness added: “We immediately realized that there had been a decompression. There were screams… for a moment I thought someone had accidentally opened the emergency door.”
They revealed that the now injured passenger had his head and shoulders out of the window. Fortunately, they had not removed their seat belt, which prevented him from being sucked in, until a fellow passenger intervened and pushed him all the way in.
Unverified videos of the incident circulating on social media show scenes from inside the plane with oxygen masks hanging from the ceiling.
Reports suggest that the window was broken by a piece of debris dislodged from one of the plane’s engines. The airline revealed that the plane returned to Thessaloniki shortly after takeoff due to a problem with the windows, adding that a replacement plane was made available to transport passengers to their destination.
