A video capturing the destructive aftermath of a midair mishap has gone viral across social media, amplifying the worst fears about air travel. The extraordinarily rare incident involved a Malta Air plane, a subsidiary of Irish budget airline Ryanair, as it headed from Greece to Germany.

Visuals shared on social media reveal the uncontained engine failure that severely damaged the Boeing jet, with missing fan blades and punctures to the engine cowling. The footage circulating online showed the damaged engine of the aircraft, which the US Federal Aviation Administration has since confirmed was a Boeing 737 NG – the predecessor to the current MAX generation of 737 planes.

The incident also brought back memories of a similar horror from 2018 when a woman died after debris from an exploded engine smashed a window on a Southwest Airlines plane at 32,000 feet, partially sucking her out.

Another Southwest 737 NG flight suffered a similar engine failure in 2016. In the wake of the 2018 fatality, the US National Transportation Safety Board called on Boeing to redesign the fan cowl structure on those planes.

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Ryanair passengers nearly sucked out of the window: Reports

According to Ryanair’s statement, the plane was scheduled to fly from Thessaloniki in Greece to Memmingen airport in Germany. However, it was forced to make an emergency U-turn to its departure point shortly after takeoff “when a passenger window dislodged inflight.”

Flight tracking website Flightradar24 reported that the Ryanair Boeing jet was climbing through 15,000 feet about six minutes after departure when it suffered an uncontained engine failure. Consequently, the flight descended to 6,000 feet to burn fuel for 30 minutes before safely landing in Thessaloniki approximately an hour after departure.

Although the Irish low-cost airline didn’t confirm the emerging reports of an extremely unconventional and harrowing mid-air scare impacting a passenger, local media in Greece said otherwise. The reports, which echo what two airport sources with knowledge of the incident told Reuters, suggested that a piece of the engine broke off and smashed a window in flight, prompting the cabin to decompress.

The near-death episode even resulted in a passenger being sucked out of the dislodged window, according to local media and Reuters. Flightradar24 further reported that other passengers and crew fortunately managed to pull the passenger back inside.

Ryanair added in its statement that a passenger “requested and received medical assistance on the ground in Thessaloniki.”

Serbian authorities have since appeared to confirm that the passenger who escaped death is a Serbian national and was transferred to the  AHEPA University General Hospital in Thessaloniki. While he does not face life-threatening injuries, doctors are still figuring out the extent of the injuries, the Serbian Consulate said.

Michalis Giannakos, president of the Panhellenic Federation of Public Hospital Employees, also identified the affected passenger as a 61-year-old Serbian man, the BBC reported. As quoted by the British news outlet, the Greek hospital official said that the passenger’s “wife held onto his legs for around five minutes to stop him from being sucked out.”

What caused the Ryanair Boeing 737 NG scare?

Amid ongoing investigations, authorities have yet to reveal what caused the window to break.

In the meantime, US safety regulators from the National Transportation Safety Board said Friday (US time) that the agency had been notified by the Aircraft Accident and Incident Investigation Committee of North Macedonia that a Ryanair Boeing 737 flight had to make an emergency landing “due to a right engine issue and cabin decompression.”

Thessaloniki airport’s operator Fraport Greece confirmed the incident is under investigation by the Hellenic Air and Rail Safety Investigation Authority.

The FAA also said that it was prepared to support Greece’s Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority and the NTSB in the investigation.

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Passenger accounts come forward

The Irish airline’s post-incident statement affirmed that the Boeing aircraft landed “normally” and passengers “returned to the terminal,” adding that a “replacement aircraft was arranged to bring passengers to Memmingen” hours later.

Although Ryanair merely mentioned a passenger receiving medical assistance on the ground, passengers speaking to local media vividly illustrated the harrowing incident that allegedly left a man hanging out the window before others pulled him back into the plane.

“We immediately realised there had been a decompression. There were screams… for a moment I thought someone had accidentally opened the emergency door,” a passenger named Christina 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.”

“When the oxygen masks dropped, we had no idea what was going to happen,” another passenger, Sofia, told the local radio. “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.”