A Ryanair-operated Air Malta flight from Thessaloniki was forced to turn back after a window blew out mid-air, nearly sucking passenger Ljubisa Karović out of the Boeing 737-800. He was saved by his seatbelt and the help of his wife and fellow passengers, though he suffered facial bleeding, a badly damaged hand and friction burns and is being treated in hospital. The incident has raised fresh questions about aircraft safety, coming after similar though rarer cabin decompression events on other airlines.

Passenger accounts suggest the window was struck by debris after the plane's right engine failed at around 16,000ft, with footage appearing to show a missing fan blade, though investigators have not yet confirmed the cause. Such incidents remain extremely rare: the last comparable case was in 2018, when a Southwest Airlines passenger, Jennifer Riordan, died after being partially blown out of a window following a similar fan blade failure. Other precedents include a 2024 Alaska Airlines door panel blowout, a Sichuan Airlines co-pilot who survived a shattered cockpit window in 2018, and a British Airways pilot who survived being held out of a blown windshield by his legs for 20 minutes in 1990.