A broken fan blade in a Ryanair Boeing 737-800's engine sent debris smashing through a cabin window over Greece, partially sucking a 61-year-old passenger out of the aircraft, and FAA-mandated safety upgrades on the plane had not yet been completed.
The National Transportation Safety Board's preliminary report confirmed what passengers aboard the July 10 flight from Thessaloniki already knew firsthand: something catastrophic happened to the right engine roughly 20 minutes after takeoff, and Ljubisa Karovic nearly paid for it with his life. The fan blade broke loose, hurled shards outward at high speed, and one or more fragments struck the window next to seat 11F, Karovic's seat. The window gave way. At approximately 15,000 feet, the cabin decompressed, oxygen masks dropped, and Karovic's head, right shoulder, and arm were pulled outside the fuselage.
His seatbelt held. His wife, Svetlana Grkovic Maksimovic, seated in an aisle seat three rows back, did not wait for instructions. She leapt up, grabbed her husband's legs, and held on. Other passengers joined her. The struggle to keep Karovic inside the aircraft lasted up to two minutes, long enough, at that altitude and airspeed, for the outcome to have been far worse.
Karovic blacked out while his upper body dangled from the fuselage. After passengers pulled him back inside, he fainted three more times. He spent six days in a Greek hospital with neck and shoulder injuries, friction burns, and burns to his face, right hand, and arm. His face was swollen. His ear, in his own words, was "like a giant doughnut." He wore a neck brace for six weeks afterward, and doctors warned he might need surgery if the pain continues.
Two weeks after the ordeal, the Daily Mail spoke to Karovic, a softly spoken Serbian national who had boarded the flight looking forward to surprising his brother for a 60th birthday celebration.
"I only remember hearing the explosion, not much else. I fell asleep quite quickly as I usually do on flights. Then there was this deafening explosion, which startled me."
He described the aftermath in stark terms.
"I don't remember anything at all because I immediately passed out. But the whole thing has been like a nightmare. I can't even sleep at night, all I can hear when I close my eyes is the sound of an explosion and then there is chaos in my head."
Karovic credited his seatbelt, and his wife, with saving his life. "Maybe it was the seatbelt that saved me, because I was still strapped in, and that gave an opportunity to my wife and the other passengers to hold onto me and pull me back inside," he said. "But maybe it is fate."
His wife, Grkovic Maksimovic, told Fox News what drove her in the moment: "I thought, if we die, we die together."
The NTSB preliminary report raised questions that go well beyond one broken fan blade. Flight crews had reported four suspected bird strikes to the same right engine over the year preceding the July 10 incident. Bird remains were confirmed after two of those four strikes. Maintenance records show the engine's fan blades were ultrasonically inspected in both November 2025 and May 2026, with no damage found either time.
Jeff Guzzetti, a former NTSB and FAA investigator who reviewed the preliminary report, said the plane's maintenance schedule appeared to have been followed correctly, but that does not close the case.
"We know what happened and even to some extent why it happened, but there's still unanswered questions that the NTSB will get at."
Guzzetti indicated investigators will likely examine how inspections were conducted and whether the repeated bird strikes inflicted cumulative damage that standard inspections failed to catch. The reason the fan blade fractured has not been determined. Bird strike evidence found by the NTSB during its investigation has only sharpened that line of inquiry.
One detail in the NTSB findings deserves particular scrutiny. Breitbart reported that FAA-mandated safety modifications to engine coverings on Boeing 737s, required after previous fan blade failures, including a fatal 2018 Southwest Airlines incident, had not yet been completed on the Ryanair aircraft involved. The compliance deadline is July 2028.
Guzzetti addressed the timeline directly. "It takes time to do the maintenance, to get the parts, and the risk at the time was assessed such that the industry could probably wait that long," he said. "Now with this event, that may change things."
That is a polite way of saying the FAA gave airlines years to implement safety fixes on engines known to throw fan blades, and a passenger nearly died before the deadline arrived. Whether regulators now accelerate the compliance schedule is an open question. The fact that it is still open, after a man's head was hanging outside a pressurized cabin at 15,000 feet, is itself the indictment.
An unnamed passenger aboard the flight described the scene to Radio Thessaloniki, as the New York Post reported: "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."
Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary complicated matters for his own company. He told investors the investigation was focused on foreign object damage, rather than a defect related to the aircraft's age or maintenance record. The NTSB responded by scolding O'Leary publicly, stating that nothing had been ruled out and that he was not authorized to discuss the investigation.
Ryanair said it would not comment further until the NTSB investigation is complete. That is the right posture, and it would have been the right posture before O'Leary tried to steer the narrative toward a conclusion the investigators themselves had not reached. When a federal safety board has to remind an airline CEO to stop getting ahead of the evidence, it does not inspire confidence that the airline's priority is transparency.
Greece initially held jurisdiction over the investigation but transferred it to the NTSB under international aviation rules, because the Boeing 737-800 was assembled in the United States. The aircraft's recent operational history, including a reported return to the airport the day before the incident, adds another layer to the questions investigators must answer.
The flight had departed Thessaloniki bound for Memmingen, Germany. After the engine failure and decompression, the aircraft returned safely to Thessaloniki, and passengers were placed on a replacement flight.
Aviation consultant Richard J. Levy, a former American Airlines captain, explained the physics to Fox News: "With a cracked window and the pressure on the window from cabin pressurization, the window cracked, broke, and then the extreme difference in air pressure from the cabin to the outside creates a strong suction." At 15,000 feet, that pressure differential is enormous. The window did not simply fall out. It was blown out, and the cabin tried to expel whatever was nearest, in this case, Ljubisa Karovic.
Karovic gave his first full account of the ordeal to the Daily Mail. He acknowledged how close he came.
"I am lucky because my injuries could have been a lot worse. I can't tell you what was going through my mind when I was hanging outside the plane, but I am grateful that I am still here."
The NTSB's final report has not been released. The reason the fan blade fractured remains undetermined. Four bird strikes to the same engine over a single year sit in the record. FAA-mandated safety upgrades sit incomplete. And a 61-year-old man who fell asleep on a routine European flight woke up hanging outside the fuselage, alive only because his wife refused to let go.
When regulators give airlines until 2028 to fix a known engine problem, and a passenger nearly dies in 2026, the question is not whether the timeline was reasonable on paper. The question is who answers for it when the paper stops mattering and the window gives way.
