Passenger says man sucked out during flight had his head and neck out of the plane and 'luckily he was wearing a seatbelt'

Ryanair plane at Eindhoven airport in the Netherlands
REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw
A woman who was on the Ryanair plane in which a passenger was partially sucked out of the plane mid-flight said that an "indescribable panic" gripped the aircraft during the incident this Friday (10), and that "luckily, he was wearing a seatbelt".
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The flight was forced to make an emergency landing at Thessaloniki airport, in Greece, where it had left minutes before, due to the incident. The man was rescued and received medical care on the ground, according to the airline. Read more below.
The passenger, identified only as Christina, described the scene to the Greek radio station "Thessaloniki 94.5". According to her, the passenger who was partially sucked out of the window was a Serb and was a few rows in front of her.
"About an hour after taking off, while everyone was sleeping, we heard a noise, something like a tire bursting, it was very loud. We immediately realized that there was depressurization, and it was just like the TV series. There were people screaming and shouting. (...) We didn't understand what was happening, but we saw that it was with a window. Some women who They were next to him and they grabbed him when he was practically with his shoulders out of the window. His entire head, neck and shoulders were outside. They were pulling him back. Luckily he hadn't taken off his belt", reported the passenger. She further described that the flight attendants were "in a state of shock", but the pilot "was very good".
"The flight attendants were completely bewildered, they couldn't speak either English or Greek, they were in shock. It was an indescribable panic. (...) For a long time we felt a lack of information - they were lost, they didn't know what was happening. Two or three doctors got up and gave first aid to the passenger, who was conscious, which was positive", he stated.
Man partially sucked out of plane
Ryanair flight makes emergency landing in Greece after passenger was almost sucked out of the plane on July 10, 2026.
Reproduction/Bild
The incident occurred shortly after takeoff, according to Ryanair. The flight was scheduled to go from Thessaloniki to Memmingen airport in Germany, but had to return to the Greek city "when a passenger window came loose during the flight", the company said in a statement.
Local media in Greece, on the other hand, reported that a part of the engine came loose and hit a window during the flight, which caused the cabin to depressurize and partially suck a passenger out. Two sources with knowledge of the incident reported the same details to the Reuters news agency.
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Ryanair said only that a passenger received medical attention on the ground, without detailing the cause, and that "the aircraft landed normally and the passengers returned to the terminal". However, sources confirmed to Reuters that this passenger, who was close to the window, had part of his body sucked out.
According to information from the German newspaper BILD, the man who was sitting right next to the window was sucked out by his head and shoulders. His wife held him by the feet before other passengers managed to pull him back into the plane.
Videos circulating on social media, taken inside the plane, showed a broken window and oxygen masks hanging from the ceiling. See below.
Data from FlightRadar24 shows that a Boeing 737 NG, en route to Memmingen, returned to Thessaloniki on Friday morning.
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The same aircraft had already returned to Thessaloniki on Thursday night, on a flight bound for Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, also shortly after takeoff, according to the data and a source, although not yet the reason is not known.
A source at the airport in Greece said the aircraft still remains on the ground in Thessaloniki and that investigators are analyzing the incident.

Source: G1