Engine failure suspected as Ryanair passenger nearly sucked from jet

A Ryanair flight from Thessaloniki to Memmingen was forced to make an emergency return last Friday after a passenger window shattered at 20,000 feet, partially pulling a 61-year-old man out of the aircraft.

Ljubisa Karović remains hospitalised in Thessaloniki with serious injuries, including severe burns to his hand, according to his wife Svetlana Grković. She told Serbian outlet Nova that she and two other passengers desperately held his legs for two minutes as he repeatedly lost consciousness. His head, neck and shoulders were left exposed to the outside air.

Greek outlet Protothema reported, citing unnamed sources, that the window was shattered by a part breaking off the plane’s engine. Ryanair did not comment on that specific claim. In a brief statement, the airline said only that a passenger window had "dislodged inflight."

The stark contrast between passenger accounts of a catastrophic structural failure and the airline’s terse description will likely draw scrutiny from aviation safety regulators. For Europe’s largest budget carrier, any confirmed instance of an engine malfunction shedding parts into the fuselage raises immediate questions about fleet maintenance standards and operational safety.

The financial impact of isolated safety events is typically contained, but severe incidents can trigger regulatory audits that ground aircraft and disrupt schedules across a tight-margin network. Investors will be watching to see if Greek or European aviation authorities launch a formal investigation into the exact cause of the decompression.

Flight tracking data indicates the aircraft dropped roughly 2,700 metres shortly after the loud bang. Oxygen masks deployed, and a suitcase that passengers attempted to use to block the broken window was sucked out of the plane.

Four people were taken to hospital following the emergency landing, including one with minor injuries. The other three were discharged after precautionary checks. Ryanair quickly deployed a replacement aircraft to minimise network delays, flying the remaining passengers to Germany later that morning.