Evidence of bird strike found after Ryanair passenger nearly sucked out of plane’s broken window, NTSB says

A bird strike may have been the cause of an incident in which a passenger was nearly sucked out of a broken window aboard a Ryanair flight in Europe last month, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said in its preliminary report Thursday.

According to the NTSB, on the morning of July 10, the No. 2 engine of Ryanair Flight 1879, a Boeing 737, experienced a failure just minutes after takeoff from Thessaloniki, Greece, as it was bound for Memmingen, Germany.

One of the engine’s fan blades broke off, according to the report, sending debris out of the engine, which sliced into the fuselage of the plane at several points, the NTSB determined, damaging the aircraft as well as busting out a passenger window in row 11.

The passenger sitting in that seat was partially sucked out of the plane, suffering serious injuries, the NTSB said. 

NTSB investigators discovered evidence of bird remains, including feathers, inside the engine that failed. Pilots received a warning about the engine and then heard a loud bang, the report said.

“Engine fragments breached the fuselage and the cabin depressurized,” the NTSB report stated.

Pieces of the shattered window were found across several rows of the plane, the NTSB said. Investigators also found signs of metal fatigue at the base of the fan blade that broke off, despite recent inspections of the fan blades. Three loose fan blade fragments were recovered from the engine. 

Data recorders revealed that the vibrations on the No. 2 engine were higher than those of the No. 1 engine during the end of takeoff, the NTSB said. 

NTSB investigators also found that engine updates that have been required for U.S. airlines to complete by 2028 have not been made on this aircraft. As Ryanair is an Irish airline, it is not subject to Federal Aviation Administration regulations.   

There were 149 passengers and six crew members aboard the plane, which immediately returned to the Thessaloniki International Airport, the NTSB said. No one else aboard was hurt.  

The plane had been involved in four reported bird strikes in the previous 12 months leading up to the July 10 incident, according to the NTSB, and bird remains were previously found in two of those cases.  

NTSB investigators said the latest bird remains they found were deep inside the engine, and they’re unsure if they were from the July 10 incident or from something previous.

Those remains and other samples were sent to the Smithsonian Institution Feather Identification Lab in Washington, D.C., for examination.  

The injured passenger, a 61-year-old Serbian man, later recounted his experience to The Guardian.

“I don’t remember much and my head and neck still hurt but I am still alive,” he told the British outlet. “It could have been the seatbelt, the fact that I was still strapped in.”

According to the report, a flight attendant told NTSB investigators that after the cabin depressurized and oxygen masks dropped, they noticed the passenger in 11F “partially lodged in a damaged cabin window, and that the entire window was missing.”

Other passengers were able to pull the man back into the cabin, and he was moved to row 12, where he received treatment from a fellow passenger who was a doctor, the NTSB said.

Another passenger went into the forward galley of the plane and retrieved a “metal box” to try and block the broken cabin window, according to the NTSB.

Greek authorities delegated the NTSB as the lead investigating agency in the incident. The NTSB’s final report will likely come within the next 12 to 24 months, per protocol. 

In a statement provided to CBS News in response to the report, a Boeing spokesperson said the company “continues to support the investigation led by” the NTSB.

“Consistent with NTSB requirements and International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Annex 13 protocols, Boeing defers to the NTSB,” the statement read. “We remain in contact and continue to work with our customers Ryanair and Malta Air.”

CBS News has also reached out to Ryanair for comment on the report.