A Ryanair passenger was sucked up to his shoulders out of a shattered plane window during a flight today, fellow travellers on board have claimed. 

With his head trapped outside the smashed window, nearby passengers held the man down to prevent more of his body being sucked further out of the aircraft mid-flight.

The Boeing 737-800 flight from Thessaloniki, Greece, to Memmingen, Germany, had to turn back and land at its departure airport following the dramatic incident.

The jet took off from Greece as planned at 5.55am local time, but shortly after takeoff at an altitude of approximately 20,000ft, a loud bang was heard on board.

A witness told the German Press Agency (dpa) that a window smashed, as seen in videos circulating on social media.

Shortly after the sudden noise, a man seated next to the window was 'sucked' through it, according to the German publication BILD.

'His head and shoulders were sticking out of the broken window,' another witness told Greek broadcaster ERT. 

The man's wife apparently held him by his legs for about five minutes, after which fellow passengers were able to pull him back into the cabin as oxygen masks dropped down. 

A Ryanair spokesman told the Daily Mail: 'A Ryanair flight from Thessaloniki to Memmingen on Friday morning 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 9.53am local this morning.'

According to publicly available flight data, the Ryanair plane landed back in Thessaloniki after one hour and 14 minutes. 

The injured passenger is believed to be a 61-year-old Serbian national.

He was wounded in the neck by the impact and also sustained abrasions and burns, according to Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf.

The man is understood to be conscious but in a state of shock. 

A pregnant woman also on board the flight was taken to hospital. According to local media, she is in good health and has since left the hospital. 

Greek media is speculating that the incident was caused when part of the plane's engine broke off, causing damage to the window. 

The pilot then decided to turn around and return immediately to Thessaloniki airport.

Commenting on the incident, the president of the Panhellenic Federation of Public Hospital Employees (POEDIN) claimed there was 'almost a tragedy'.

He said the 'damaged' window gave way and that part of the passenger's body was pulled outside the aircraft before he was restrained by his wife. 

People on social media were quick to react to the dramatic incident, with one user writing on X: 'That's terrifying. Always wear your seatbelt folks.'

However, according to a fellow passenger, the man was wearing his seatbelt. 

A woman who was on the thriller flight spoke to Radio Thessaloniki 94.5 about what she witnessed.

'A noise was heard as if a tire had burst. There was panic with screams, screams and voices because we immediately lost altitude from the decompression,' she said.

'For a moment I thought someone had accidentally opened the emergency door. The flight attendants lost it. We all immediately put on our masks. It seemed like a very long time before we understood what was happening.'

Regarding the 61-year-old Serb, she added: 'They grabbed him and held him down; fortunately, he hadn't taken off his seatbelt. 

'His head was completely outside the plane. The girls who were next to him were pulling him. Some doctors also went to help him.'

Greek media reported the incident had occurred over North Macedonia, and said the window had been broken by a piece of debris that detached from one of the plane's engines.

In April 2018, a 43-year-old woman died after an engine failed on Southwest Flight 1380, and debris smashed the window beside her seat in the 14th row of the plane. 

Witnesses said Jennifer Riordan, who was a mother-of-two from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and an executive at Wells Fargo bank, was out of the aircraft to her waist after the window shattered.

According to Philadelphia's medical examiner, her cause of death was blunt trauma to the head, neck and torso. 

Fellow passengers were praised for pulling Mrs Riordan back into the aircraft and trying to save her. 

Her tragic death was ruled an accident.

Seven other travellers were wounded before the jet made an emergency landing in Philadelphia.

The plane set off from New York to Dallas with 144 passengers and five crew on board.

In May 2018, the co-pilot of a Sichuan Airlines flight that was forced to make an emergency landing was 'sucked halfway out' of the aircraft when a cockpit windshield blew out, local media reported.

Captain Liu Chuanjian – celebrated as a hero on social media after being forced to land the Airbus A319 manually – told the Chengdu Economic Daily his jet had just reached a cruising altitude of 32,000ft when an earsplitting sound spread through the cockpit. 

Amid a sudden loss of pressure and drop in temperature, he looked to his side and noticed the right windshield was gone. 

'There was no warning sign. Suddenly the windshield just cracked and made a loud bang. The next thing I know my co-pilot had been sucked halfway out of the window,' he was quoted as saying.

'Everything in the cockpit was floating in the air. Most of the equipment malfunctioned ... and I couldn’t hear the radio. The plane was shaking so hard I could not read the gauges.'

In March 2024, Boeing was found to have erased security footage showing 'repairs' being made to an Alaska Airlines flight, months before a door plug blew out at 16,000ft sparking a massive federal probe into airline safety. 

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) officials, who investigated the incident, noted in a letter to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation that the Boeing 737-9 plane underwent rivet repairs in September 2023.

The door plug blew out mid-flight above Oregon on January 5 that year and led to an emergency landing.

NTSB leaders said the door plug that failed was opened during the repair work months earlier but that Boeing has not been able to locate records of the work.

'To date, we still do not know who performed the work to open, reinstall, and close the door plug on the accident aircraft. Boeing has informed us that they are unable to find the records documenting this work,' Jennifer Homendy, NTSB chairman, wrote in the letter.

'A verbal request was made by our investigators for security camera footage to help obtain this information; however, they were informed the footage was overwritten.

'The absence of those records will complicate the NTSB’s investigation moving forward.'