Ryanair Incident Report: Passenger's Head Sucked Into Window Broken by Engine Debris

A preliminary investigation into the Ryanair incident where a passenger's head and shoulder were sucked into a window has revealed that the window was shattered by debris from a broken engine, writes the BBC.

The preliminary report was presented by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) — a U.S. federal agency that investigates the causes of transportation accidents and disasters.

The document states that on July 10, shortly after takeoff from Thessaloniki to Memmingen on a Ryanair flight, "a fan blade from the second (right) engine detached during climb."

"The crew decided to return to Thessaloniki International Airport, where they made an uneventful landing," the report says.

In the days following the incident, Greek authorities "fully transferred the investigation" to the American federal agency.

The head and right shoulder of Serbian citizen Lyubisha Karavich were sucked into the airplane window, resulting in him sustaining "serious injuries and being in a state of shock."

As the BBC reported, the victim's wife, Svetlana Grkovich-Maksimovich, and two other passengers held him by his legs for several minutes.

The NTSB report provides a chronology of events based on the flight crew's account. It indicates that during the climb, the pilots received a signal about "strong vibration" in the engine. In response, they reduced engine power and performed a series of checks. As the report states, when the vibration stopped, the crew continued to climb on autopilot.

However, the engine vibration then resumed, and the crew heard a loud bang, after which the pilots declared an emergency and began their descent.

Flight attendants also reported feeling vibrations, and shortly before the oxygen masks deployed, they saw a small amount of smoke in the cabin.

Then, according to one of the flight attendants, passengers began calling for help — and the stewards saw that one person was literally being sucked out through the broken window.

The report notes that in May of this year, the engine underwent an ultrasonic inspection, during which no malfunctions were detected.

Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary previously suggested that the incident could have been caused by "foreign object damage to the engine."

As media reported, the Boeing 737-800 aircraft was manufactured in 2008 and operated by Ryanair's subsidiary, Malta Air.

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