A Ryanair flight from Thessaloniki to Memmingen turned back shortly after take-off on Friday morning after a passenger window dislodged in flight, leaving one man injured and passengers shaken by a sudden loss of cabin pressure. The aircraft landed back in Thessaloniki and one passenger received medical assistance on the ground.
The episode mattered immediately because it unfolded in the first minutes of an international journey and triggered a rapid return, a replacement aircraft and a formal investigation. Passengers said the plane was airborne for about 10 minutes before it abruptly descended 9,000ft, and one woman, Sofia, said that when the oxygen masks dropped, those on board had no idea what was going to happen and did not know whether they would make it back.
What Sofia and others described was a violent decompression inside the cabin. She said she and other passengers sitting at the back realised there had been some kind of explosion, thought the plane was going down and felt they could not breathe. She also said the injured man was bleeding and lost consciousness several times. Another passenger, Christina, said the screams started almost immediately, the masks dropped and there was a strong smell in the cabin.
Medical officials later said a 61-year-old Serbian national was being treated for friction burns. Michalis Giannakos said the man was in shock and remained conscious, and that his wife held onto his legs for around five minutes to stop him from being sucked out. Passengers told local media the man was left hanging head first out of the window as far as his shoulders before others pulled him back inside, a detail that captured just how close the incident came to becoming far worse.
There is still one question the passengers cannot answer: what actually caused the window to come loose. Some on board told local media the window was smashed by pieces of the jet's engine, but Ryanair did not comment on that claim. The airline said only that its Friday morning flight returned shortly after take-off when a passenger window dislodged in flight, that the aircraft landed normally and that a replacement aircraft was arranged several hours later to complete the trip.
The plane was operated by Ryanair's subsidiary Malta Air and was believed to be an 18 year-old-plane. Thessaloniki airport's operator said the case is under investigation by the Hellenic Air and Rail Safety Investigation Authority, while the Irish Aviation Authority said it was aware of the incident and would assist investigators. For the passengers who heard an explosion and watched a man dangle outside the fuselage, the next phase will not be about the flight to Memmingen but about whether investigators can explain how a routine departure turned into a mid-air emergency.
