A Broken Engine Part Smashed a Plane Window and Pulled a Passenger Partway Out — Here's What Happened
A broken piece of metal from an engine smashed through a cabin window on a Ryanair flight in July, and the sudden rush of air pulled a passenger's head and right shoulder partway through the hole. That's the finding of a preliminary report from the US National Transportation Safety Board, the agency that investigates major transportation accidents in the United States (BBC News).
The injured passenger was Serbian national Ljubisa Karović, who was left seriously injured and in shock. Greek authorities handed the investigation entirely to the NTSB in the days after the incident. The plane was operated by Malta Air, a company owned by Ryanair (BBC News; KDH News).
According to the NTSB report's timeline, pieced together from the pilots' accounts, the right-side engine lost a fan blade during the climb after takeoff. Jet engines have large spinning fan blades at the front that pull air into the engine. When one of those blades breaks off, it's called a fan-blade-out.
The crew first got a warning that the engine was vibrating heavily. They reduced engine power and ran checks. When the vibrations seemed to stop, the crew kept climbing on autopilot. Then the vibrations came back, stronger, and the crew heard a loud bang. They declared an emergency, began descending, and returned to Thessaloniki International Airport in Greece, where they landed safely (BBC News).
In the cabin, flight attendants said they felt vibrations and saw a small amount of smoke before the oxygen masks dropped down. A flight attendant reported that a passenger had become stuck in a damaged window — the entire window was gone. At cruising altitude, the air inside the cabin is kept at a higher pressure than the thin air outside. When the window broke, that pressure difference created a strong airflow that pulled Karović partway through the opening (BBC News).
The NTSB report noted that the engine had been inspected in May using ultrasound — the same kind of technology used in medical scans — and no problems were found. Ultrasound inspections send sound waves through metal parts to find hidden cracks before they get bad enough to cause a break (BBC News).
Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary suggested the incident may have been caused by foreign object damage — meaning debris from a runway or floating in the air got sucked into the engine. The NTSB has not yet confirmed a cause. The fact that the blade passed inspection about two months before it failed means investigators are looking at two possibilities: either the blade was damaged after the May inspection, or it had a defect too small to detect at that time (BBC News).
What the Timeline Reveals
The crew's decision to keep climbing after the first vibration warning stopped is a detail that will get close attention as the investigation continues. The NTSB timeline shows they reduced power, ran checks, saw that vibrations had stopped, and continued climbing before the second, worse vibration and the loud bang. This raises questions about how pilots should handle engine vibration warnings that come and go, and at what point they should turn the plane around rather than continue. The report is preliminary, and the NTSB has not yet determined a cause.
Cabin Window Integrity and Containment
Jet engines are designed so that if a fan blade breaks, the broken pieces stay trapped inside the engine. A reinforced ring called a containment case is built around the fan section to catch flying debris. The fact that broken engine pieces reached the cabin and shattered a window suggests this containment system may have failed, or the debris found a path around it. The NTSB's examination of the broken blade, when finished, will be key to figuring out whether the failure started with a hidden defect in the metal, a crack that grew over time, or damage from outside debris.
The broader context here is the system of inspections and rules that covers engine fan blades across the thousands of Boeing 737-800 planes flying worldwide. The CFM56 engines on these planes have flown hundreds of millions of hours, and the inspection schedules and ultrasound methods used on them are well-tested. A blade passing inspection in May and breaking in July is a short gap, and investigators will need to figure out whether the inspection was done correctly, whether something damaged the blade between the inspection and the failure, or whether the blade broke in a way that current inspections aren't designed to catch. If the cause turns out to be a defect in the metal or in manufacturing, it could affect the entire fleet. If debris is to blame, attention shifts to the conditions at the airports where the plane flew during those two months.
The NTSB's final report, which will include the likely cause and any safety recommendations, is typically released months after the preliminary findings.
