Passengers aboard a Ryanair plane bound for Germany have reportedly had to pull a man back inside the aircraft after he was partially sucked out in horrifying, mid-air scenes.
Witnesses have described seeing a man’s head and shoulders outside of the Boeing 737-800 after a passenger window shattered while the plane was travelling from Thessaloniki, in Greece, to Memmingen, in Germany.
The man’s legs were reportedly held down by nearby passengers before he was able to be pulled back inside.
The plane was forced to return to Thessaloniki where the man, understood to be a 61-year-old Serbian national, was hospitalised with friction burns.
Ryanair said the aircraft, which departed just before 6am Friday, local time, “returned to Thessaloniki shortly after takeoff when a passenger window detached during the flight.
“The aircraft landed normally and the passengers returned to the terminal.”
One passenger told Radio Thessaloniki a loud noise was heard not long into the flight, and that oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling as the cabin lost pressure.
“Most of us had fallen asleep, we had closed our eyes. There was a noise, like a tyre bursting,” the woman said.
“We immediately realised there had been a decompression. There were screams … for a moment I thought someone had accidentally opened the emergency door.
“The masks dropped and there was a strong smell. The head and shoulders of one passenger were outside the window. Fortunately, he hadn’t taken off his seat belt.”
She said passengers helped to pull him back inside.
Another witness told Greek broadcaster ERT the man’s “head and shoulders were sticking out of the broken window.”
Greek media reported the incident had occurred over North Macedonia, and said the window had been broken by a piece of debris that detached from one of the plane’s engines.
A replacement aircraft was made available to transport the remaining passengers to Memmingen, Ryanair said.
– with AFP