Broken engine parts shattered the Ryanair plane window that a passenger’s head got sucked into: NTSB

Broken engine parts shattered a window on a Ryanair flight shortly after takeoff in Greece last month, causing a man’s head to be sucked through the opening before his fellow passengers pulled him back inside, U.S. investigators said Thursday.

A fan blade in the Boeing 737-800’s right engine broke loose, sending fragments through the fuselage, according to a preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board.

The July 10 incident 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.

The 61-year-old man who was nearly sucked out of the plane suffered neck and shoulder injuries and friction burns.

Panicked passengers helped the man after the window broke

The flight attendants told investigators that they heard and felt loud continuous vibration and saw smoke or fog inside the cabin before the oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling.

One of them then noticed some passengers standing up and calling for help because the man who was sitting in a row 11 window seat was partially lodged in a damaged window. The other passengers managed to pull him back into the cabin.

The injured passenger was moved to row 12, where a passenger who is a doctor tended to him. Other passengers got a metal box from the flight attendants, which they used to try to block the broken window until the plane could land.

A series of short videos recorded from inside the plane and shared by Radio Thessaloniki showed passengers wearing oxygen masks after the cabin lost pressure. Another appeared to show the blown-out window, with a man seated nearby wearing an oxygen mask. A third video, apparently filmed after the aircraft landed, showed first responders working in the aisle.

The engine’s fan blades were inspected in May

Last month, Ryanair said in a statement that the flight “returned to Thessaloniki shortly after takeoff when a passenger window dislodged in-flight.”

International aviation rules allow Greece’s Hellenic Air and Rail Safety Investigation Authority to hand over investigations to the NTSB, which they did in this case, with Greece participating.

The NTSB reprimanded Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary after he told investors last month that the investigation was focused on foreign object damage and not the plane’s age or maintenance history. The NTSB said investigators hadn’t ruled anything out and that O’Leary wasn’t authorized to discuss it.

Maintenance records show that the fan blades on the right engine that failed had undergone ultrasonic inspections in May 2026 and November 2025 without finding damage. But the NTSB said that four suspected bird strikes to the same engine had been reported by the flight crews over the past year. Bird remains were found after two of those suspected strikes.

Jeff Guzzetti, a former NTSB and FAA investigator who reviewed the preliminary report, told The Associated Press that the maintenance appears to have been performed at the required intervals. But investigators will likely examine how those inspections were carried out and whether the four previous suspected bird strikes could have contributed to preexisting damage in the engine.

“We know what happened and even to some extent why it happened, but there’s still unanswered questions that the NSTB will get at,” Guzzetti said.

AP sent emailed requests for comment on the NTSB findings to Ryanair, Boeing and CFM International, the maker of the engine.

There have been at least two previous incidents in which parts of an engine made by CFM failed and breached the plane’s cabin. In 2018, a woman was killed on a Southwest Airlines flight after she was partially sucked out of a broken window. Another Southwest jet had suffered a similar blade-related engine breakup in 2016 over Florida.

Damage happened minutes after takeoff

The narrow-body plane that can seat up to 189 passengers was delivered new to Ryanair in 2008, according to flight-tracking site Flightradar24.

Flight records show that the aircraft climbed past 15,000 feet (4,570 meters) about six minutes after departure and then immediately descended to about 6,000 feet (1,830 meters) “to burn fuel for 30 minutes” before returning to Thessaloniki about an hour after taking off, Flightradar24 said.

The flight was operated by Malta Air, a subsidiary of Ryanair, Europe’s largest budget carrier.

The plane landed normally and passengers returned to the terminal. One passenger requested and received medical assistance on the ground in Thessaloniki, the airline said in a statement at the time.