A passenger onboard a Boeing 737 jet was partly sucked out of the aircraft after a window dislodged shortly after takeoff in Greece.
The passenger -- a 61-year-old Serbian national -- had been wearing his seat belt when the window dislodged, and he was pulled through the opening, a fellow passenger and a hospital workers' representative told local media. The man's wife held on to him by his legs before she and other passengers were able to pull him back inside the cabin, they said.
The Ryanair flight had taken off from Thessaloniki Airport in Greece early Friday morning when, at an altitude of 16,000 feet, pilots abandoned the climb and turned back to land on the runway. The passenger survived and was met by emergency responders, a spokesperson for the airline said.
The 737 Next Generation jet involved in the incident had been in operation by Ryanair since 2008, records show. It wasn't immediately clear what caused the window to dislodge.
The emergency is similar to a 2018 incident in which a passenger onboard a Southwest flight died after being sucked through a window that was broken by flying debris from an engine failure. The 737 jet in that incident was from the same generation of aircraft.
The Southwest incident occurred during the plane's climb from New York's LaGuardia Airport, at about 32,000 feet.
The Federal Aviation Administration responded to the 2018 accident by requiring immediate inspections of the aircraft fleet. The regulator later required a redesign of the engine nacelle -- its protective casing -- to prevent debris from escaping in the case of a catastrophic failure.
The aircraft type in Friday's incident predates Boeing's 737 MAX. In 2024, a door panel blew off the side of an Alaska Airlines-operated MAX jet midflight, just months after it was delivered.
A spokesperson for Boeing said the plane maker was aware of the Ryanair incident and were in contact with the airline.
CFM International, the company that made the aircraft's engines, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Write to Benjamin Katz at ben.katz@wsj.com and Julia Amann at julia.amann@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 10, 2026 09:49 ET (13:49 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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