‘Incredibly Lucky!’ Passenger Survives After Being Partially Sucked Out of Ryanair Flight

Screenshot via YouTube

A passenger onboard a Ryanair Boeing 737 was partially sucked out of a dislodged window as the plane took off from Thessaloniki, Greece, on Friday.

ABC News’s Tom Soufi Burridge called the 61-year-old man “incredibly lucky” to have survived the ordeal.

“This was a crazy mid-air scare,” Burridge began, continuing:

Thousands of feet up shortly after take off a window on that Ryan airplane was blown out, and we know from a doctor that was treating the man who was sitting in the window seat who was effectively sucked towards that window because of the air pressure difference and partially sucked out of the aircraft. It was only because of his wife sitting next to him who grabbed onto his feet for about five minutes and stopped him from being completely sucked out of that aircraft.

Now, we know from a senior Greek aviation official that they believe the engine on the right-hand side of the plane, there was a major rupture inside debris from inside the engine flew out and hit the fuselage and smashed the window out. Effectively that passenger is incredibly lucky. It’s similar to an incident back in 2018 when one passenger was killed on a Southwest Airlines flight. Air accident investigators will now examine the Boeing plane to work out exactly what happened.

In a statement to ABC News, Ryanair confirmed, “Ryanair flight from Thessaloniki to Memmingen on Friday morning (10 July) returned to Thessaloniki shortly after takeoff 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 minimize any delay, a replacement aircraft was arranged to bring passengers to Memmingen, which departed Thessaloniki at 9:53 local this morning,” the statement said.

Boeing told ABC News that it was aware of the incident. In addition, The National Transportation Safety Board said it was notified that the plane turned back after a “cabin decompression.”

The injured passenger is currently in the hospital, but there’s no word on his condition.

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