washington —
The National Transportation Safety Board said in a preliminary report Thursday that a fan blade from the Boeing 737’s jet engine came loose and struck the side of the cabin, breaking a window and partially ejecting a man from the plane.
On July 10, a Ryanair flight bound for Memmingen, Germany, had to make an emergency landing in Thessaloniki, Greece, less than 10 minutes after takeoff.
Ljubisa Kalovic, 61, who was sitting on the 11th floor, suffered serious injuries when her head and shoulders were sucked out of the window, her wife told Reuters. She and the flight attendant reportedly pulled him back onto the plane.
Seven and a half minutes after takeoff, the pilots were alerted to severe engine vibration, the report said. After almost two minutes, the vibrations increased significantly and the pilot “heard a loud bang” as the autopilot disengaged.
“Inspection of the aircraft revealed that the second engine, CFM International Model CFM56-7B26, experienced fan blade separation, resulting in engine debris impacting the fuselage and right horizontal stabilizer,” the report said.
The CFM-56 engine is manufactured by a joint venture between France’s Safran Aircraft Engines and GE Aerospace and is one of the most widely used engines in aviation.
The NTSB said the debris pierced the metal around the engine, shattered a window in the 11th row, left a dent in the plane near the eighth row, punched a hole in the fuselage under the wing and gouged and dented the tail.
The NTSB said evidence of fatigue cracking, a process in which metal gradually breaks down due to repeated stresses greater than expected over the number of flights, was found in the remains of the broken blade. The leading edges of the other eight blades were deformed.
A bird carcass, including feathers, was also recovered from the damaged engine, but it is unclear when the plane last struck the bird. Four suspected bird collisions were reported in the year prior to the incident, but no damage was found.
The plane’s fan blades were last inspected less than three weeks ago, due to regulations put in place after a similar incident. In 2018, a fan blade snapped on a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737, smashing a window and sucking a woman’s head and torso out of the plane. She later died from blunt force trauma.
The Ryanair plane, an 18-year-old Boeing 737-8AS, was flying at about 16,000 feet over Greek airspace when the window was blown out.
The Hellenic Aviation and Railway Safety Investigation Agency asked the NTSB to lead the investigation, as permitted by international regulations. Greece will participate as an “accredited representative,” according to the NTSB.
Citing fatigue cracks, the NTSB report said the passenger was “partially trapped by a broken window in the cabin” and that “other passengers…managed to pull the injured passenger back into the cabin,” contradicting claims made by Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary during an earnings call in July.
“There are also more sordid reports of one of the passengers being half out the window. Out the window. There was no one outside any of the windows,” O’Leary said. “Initial indications suggest what appears to be foreign object damage to the engine during takeoff from Thessaloniki.”
In a letter from NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy, the agency criticized her for commenting on the investigation while it was still ongoing.
“As the NTSB is currently investigating the accident, authorized representatives and their technical advisors are prohibited from commenting on the potential causes of the accident or communicating any potential investigative information,” Homendy said in the letter. “Mr. O’Leary’s public statements provide opinions and analysis of the accident and indicate potential areas of interest in the ongoing investigation, and are in violation of (international rules).”
NTSB investigations typically take one to two years to complete and end with a final report identifying possible causes and contributing factors.
