A mid-flight engine failure on a Ryanair-operated flight last July left one passenger seriously injured after broken engine fragments shattered a cabin window, pulling his head and shoulder partially out of the aircraft, US transportation investigators have confirmed in a newly released preliminary assessment.
The event unfolded on 10 July, when the flight — traveling from Thessaloniki, Greece, to Memmingen, Germany, and operated by Ryanair’s subsidiary Malta Air — suffered a catastrophic fan blade break in its right-side engine just moments after departing Thessaloniki International Airport. As the broken fan blade fragmented, pieces of the engine structure collided with the plane’s cabin, dislodging one window entirely.
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators, who took over full probe responsibilities at the request of Greek civil aviation authorities, confirmed that 62-year-old Serbian national Ljubisa Karović was seated adjacent to the broken window. The sudden change in cabin pressure pulled Karović’s head and right shoulder through the opening, leaving him with serious injuries and in acute shock following the incident.
In accounts collected after the emergency landing, Karović’s wife Svetlana Grković Maksimović recalled that she and two other traveling passengers grabbed onto her husband’s legs and held him firmly for several minutes, preventing him from being pulled completely out of the aircraft as the crew worked to stabilize the plane.
The NTSB’s timeline of the incident matches the chaotic sequence reported by crew members. Shortly after takeoff, as the plane climbed to cruising altitude, the flight crew received an alert indicating high engine vibration. Following standard protocol, they reduced power to the affected engine and ran a series of system checks. When vibrations temporarily subsided, the crew resumed the climb on autopilot.
Minutes later, however, vibrations spiked dramatically, followed by a loud bang that alerted the entire cabin to the seriousness of the failure. The crew immediately declared an in-flight emergency and initiated an immediate descent back to Thessaloniki, the departure airport.
Cabin crew members told investigators they felt the growing vibrations, spotted a small amount of smoke in the cabin, and deployed emergency oxygen masks before passengers began calling for help over the partially ejected passenger. The crew ultimately made a safe, uneventful landing back at Thessaloniki, with emergency crews waiting on the tarmac to treat the injured passenger.
Preliminary inspection records show the affected engine underwent routine ultrasonic testing for structural faults in May of this year, and no anomalies or damage were detected during that check. Ryanair Group CEO Michael O’Leary has previously hypothesized that the failure stemmed from foreign object damage — debris from the airfield or environment striking the engine fan blade during or before takeoff. The NTSB has not yet issued a final determination on the root cause of the incident, with the full investigation ongoing.