A Plane Engine Broke Apart and a Passenger Was Nearly Pulled Out a Window: Here's What Happened
A report by US safety investigators has found that a broken engine part caused a window to shatter on a Ryanair flight from Greece to Germany in July 2026, and a passenger was partly sucked out of the plane while it was still in the air. The Guardian
The incident happened on 10 July 2026 on flight FR1879, a Boeing 737-800 flown by Ryanair's subsidiary Malta Air. The plane was carrying 149 passengers and four flight attendants on a regular route from Thessaloniki, Greece to Memmingen, near Munich, Germany. Greek authorities handed the investigation over to the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), an independent government agency that investigates serious transportation accidents. The NTSB gave the case the title "Ryanair Uncontained Engine Failure followed by Cabin Depressurization and Passenger Window Injury." NTSB
The NTSB's early findings show that the right engine lost a fan blade while the plane was climbing after takeoff from Thessaloniki International Airport. A fan blade is one of the spinning blades at the front of a jet engine that pulls air into the engine to create thrust. When one breaks off, it can cause serious damage as loose pieces hit other parts of the engine. In this case, blade No. 10 broke off near its base. The pilots had gotten a warning about strong engine vibrations during the climb, so they reduced engine power and ran through their checklist. The vibrations eased, and the crew kept climbing on autopilot. Then the vibrations surged and the crew heard a loud bang. NTSB
After the engine parts broke through the plane's outer wall, the air inside the cabin rapidly escaped. At high altitude, the air outside a plane is too thin to breathe, so cabins are pressurised, meaning the air inside is kept at a comfortable level. When a hole opens in the cabin wall, that pressurised air rushes out, which is called depressurisation. The two pilots put on their oxygen masks, declared an emergency, and quickly descended the plane. They turned back to Thessaloniki airport and landed safely. Flight attendants said they felt a loud, constant vibration and saw a small amount of fog or smoke before the oxygen masks dropped down.
Serbian entrepreneur Ljubisa Karović, aged 61, was sitting by the window in seat 11F. The broken engine parts hit and shattered his window, and the rush of air pulled his head and right arm out of the opening. Other passengers grabbed him and held on, stopping him from being pulled completely out of the plane. His wife, Svetlana, later told him he had fainted several times, including after being pulled back inside. Speaking less than two weeks after the incident, Karović told the Guardian he was lucky to be alive. He said he did not remember much of what happened but had a painful head and neck. The Guardian
The investigation also turned up details about the plane's recent history. Flight crews had reported four bird strikes to the plane's right engine in the twelve months before the incident. A bird strike is when a bird is sucked into a jet engine, which can damage the engine's blades. Bird remains were reportedly found in two of those earlier cases. Reuters separately reported that bird remains were found in the engine after this July 2026 incident as well. The fan blades had also been checked using ultrasonic inspections in recent months, which use sound waves to look for hidden cracks inside metal parts. No problems were found at the time. Reuters
The broader context here raises a question that investigators will be digging into: could the earlier bird strikes have weakened the fan blade over time, even though the inspections did not catch any damage? Jet engines are built with a protective casing around the fan blades designed to keep broken pieces from flying out if a blade snaps. But that casing cannot always stop every piece of high-speed debris, as this incident shows. The fact that the blade broke with no warning signs from the inspections suggests the damage either developed between check-ups or was not the kind that the sound-wave method could detect.
The NTSB's preliminary report lays out the facts as they are known so far. The agency will continue its investigation, which will likely focus on examining the broken blade's metal up close, looking at whether the earlier bird strikes contributed to the failure, and deciding whether current inspection schedules and methods are good enough for engines with this kind of history. A final report with the probable cause and any new safety recommendations will come later. NTSB
