Engine fragments were to blame for a broken window on a Ryanair plane that led to a passenger being partially sucked out of an aircraft during a flight in July, U.S. investigators said Thursday.
A preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found that an engine blade on Ryanair flight 1879 from Greece on July 10 failed and broke away shortly after takeoff, causing fragments to breach the fuselage, including a window, and the cabin to depressurize.
Ljubisa Karović, 61, a passenger from Serbia who was sitting by the window in seat 11F, had his torso sucked out of the broken window in the incident.
He was saved from being completely sucked out of the plane by his wife and another passenger who grabbed onto him. The man suffered neck and shoulder injuries as well as friction burns.
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The accident happened after the flight departed the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki. Investigators found bird remains inside the engine, suggesting the plane may have struck birds during takeoff, though they haven’t determined what caused the fan blade to break loose.
Crew were alerted to engine vibrations at an altitude of 16,000 feet, the investigation found, causing them to reduce engine power and attempt to troubleshoot the issue. Vibrations reduced, and the flight continued to climb on autopilot.
Vibrations then increased significantly, triggering an altitude warning, prompting the crew to declare an emergency and begin an immediate descent.
Cabin crew told investigators they heard a loud bang and noticed smoke or fog fill the cabin before oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling.
After being pulled back into the aircraft, Karović was moved to row 12 and attended to by a passenger who was a doctor for the rest of the flight.
Other passengers obtained a metal box from flight attendants to plug the broken window.
The aircraft landed normally at its original departure destination, and passengers returned to the terminal.
Maintenance records show the fan blades in the right engine had undergone ultrasonic inspections in May 2026 and November 2025, with no damage found.
But flight crews had reported four suspected bird strikes to the same engine over the previous year, according to the NTSB.
The wife of the injured passenger told Greek and Serbian media in the days after the incident that half of her husband’s body was hanging out of the aircraft for close to two minutes, describing the situation as “chaos.”
In an interview with the Serbian news outlet Nova.rs, Grković said the crew instructed passengers to remain calm as people began to panic, and that pilots executed an emergency descent back to Thessaloniki.
She told the outlet she held onto her husband’s legs with all her strength while thinking, “If we’re going to die, we’ll die together,” adding that the forces pulling him out of the window were overwhelming and that she was screaming for help.
–with files from the Associated Press
Who gives a flying Fuc
Remind me again why I dont fly on these rickety planes with million dollar seats. F*ck that. I ll stay on the ground and at home. AWAY FROM PEOPLE!
Why are there still no cameras on planes? When something happens, all we have are anecdotes. Every single person should be asking why video is not recorded and streamed to the parent airport. The tech is over 20 years old and inexpensive.
I remember when I was in high school during 9/11 and was asking why planes do not have video monitoring.
We knew it was an engine issue when it happened. The title should have reflected the probability of a bird strike, or multiple bird strikes. Regular maintenance would have found the bird debris if it was not recent.
They are investigating the species of bird and Trying to find number of birds.
Aircraft engines are designed to eat a normal bird. If it hit a few white, or black storks, that would be too much to handle.