Malta Air passenger partly sucked through plane window after midair failure

A passenger survived after he was partly pulled out of the window of a plane that had taken off from Thessaloniki, Greece, today, the Greek news media reported.

The man’s head was out the window as his wife held on to his legs, the Greek reports said, citing a passenger on board. Photos and videos of the cabin posted online show a damaged window and passengers breathing through oxygen masks.

The flight was operated by Malta Air, a subsidiary of Ryanair, the low-cost Irish carrier. In a statement, Ryanair said the flight, bound for the German town of Memmingen, “returned to Thessaloniki shortly after takeoff when a passenger window dislodged in flight.”

“The aircraft landed normally and passengers returned to the terminal,” the airline said. “One passenger requested and received medical assistance on the ground in Thessaloniki.” It did not directly address the reports of a passenger being pulled through the window.

Michalis Giannakos, a union leader at Greece’s federation of hospital workers, also described the condition of the man, who was said to be 61.

“The window of the aircraft broke, his body was pulled outside and his wife was holding his legs for five minutes trying to pull him back inside,” he said in a text message. “With the help of lots of passengers, they managed to pull him back into the cabin,” he added.

A 61-year-old Serbian man was in a hospital in Thessaloniki with friction burns but conscious, according to Silia Skoutelakou, an official in the press office of the Greek Health Ministry.

Aviation tracking sites said the aircraft was a Boeing 737 that has been flying since 2008.

Boeing said in a statement that it was “aware of the incident involving flight FR1879 and are in contact with Ryanair.”

The cause of the Ryanair incident is unclear, but it bears similarities to a 2018 Southwest Airlines accident. In that flight, which operated with similar plane and engine models, an engine fan blade broke, causing part of the engine cowling to come loose and break a cabin window. A passenger was partly pulled through the opening and died from blunt-force trauma.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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