Ryanair passenger was partially sucked out of plane window before wife saved him, details emerge

Fellow passengers who witnessed a wife saving her husband from being fully sucked from a Ryanair flight have come out with their accounts, as well as what happened in the moments leading up to and after the event.

One man found himself in the terrifying position of being up to his shoulders outside an aircraft with his head on the other side of the cabin, as his wife desperately clung onto him – according to reports this morning (10 July).

This occurred allegedly on a Ryanair flight in a Boeing 737-800, which was travelling from Thessaloniki, Greece, to Memmingen, Germany.

The incident, reports the Daily Mail, forced the jet to turn back and make an emergency landing at its departure airport after flying around for 30 minutes with the man’s head outside of the window.

The broken window on the Ryanair flight (X)

Tracking data shows the plane was in the air for around 10 minutes when it abruptly dropped 9,000ft (2,700m), with the BBC reporting witnesses said they heard ‘some kind of explosion’.

The outlet also noted a Greek hospital official claimed it was a 61-year-old Serbian national who was being treated for friction burns.

Per the German Press Agency and BILD newspaper, a window had shattered, sucking the man who was seated next to it, out of the craft.

The man's wife apparently held him by his legs for approximately five minutes until other passengers are said to have pulled him back into the craft.

The person involved allegedly was injured in the freak event, suffering from burns and was ‘bleeding’ from his head, according to one witness and Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf.

“We thought we were falling,” he said, per the Daily Mail. “He had blood on his head. He fainted several times.”

"We immediately realised there had been a decompression. There were screams... for a moment I thought someone had accidentally opened the emergency door," Christina, a passenger, told Radio Thessaloniki.

"The masks dropped and there was a strong smell. The head and shoulders of one passenger were outside the window. Fortunately, he hadn't taken off his seat belt."

Sofia, another passenger, also told the show: "When the oxygen masks dropped, we had no idea what was going to happen. We didn't know whether we would make it back. We were sitting at the back of the aircraft, and we realised there had been some kind of explosion.”

"We thought the plane was going down. The decompression was extreme. It felt like we couldn't breathe. The man who was injured was bleeding and then lost consciousness several times, most likely because of the lack of oxygen and the shock," Sofia added.

As for any confirmation of what caused the shattered window, Ryanair hasn’t come out with a statement, but a Ryanair spokesman told LADbible: "A Ryanair flight from Thessaloniki to Memmingen on Friday morning (10 July) returned to Thessaloniki shortly after take-off when a passenger window dislodged inflight.

"The aircraft landed normally and passengers returned to the terminal. One passenger requested and received medical assistance on the ground in Thessaloniki.

"In order to minimise any delay, a replacement aircraft was arranged to bring passengers to Memmingen which departed Thessaloniki at 9:53 local this morning."