The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board announced Thursday that it will take the lead in investigating last week’s alarming mid-flight incident involving a Ryanair Boeing 737 over Greece, after Greek authorities handed the agency that responsibility.
The incident occurred on July 10, shortly after the aircraft departed from Thessaloniki, Greece, bound for Germany. A piece of the plane’s engine broke away and struck a window, shattering it. The resulting loss of cabin pressure forced the crew to make an emergency landing.
A passenger identified as Serbian national Ljubisa Karovic was partially pulled through the broken window during the incident. Other passengers grabbed hold of him and kept him from being fully ejected. Karovic was injured and taken to a hospital.
The episode drew comparisons to two earlier incidents involving Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 NG aircraft in 2016 and 2018. During the 2018 incident, a passenger died after being partially sucked out of a window that had been damaged by a broken fan blade.
However, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford cautioned against drawing direct parallels. Speaking to Reuters, Bedford said: “I don’t think the early indications are that (the recent Ryanair problem) mimics what the Southwest incident was.”
Following the 2018 Southwest incident, the NTSB urged Boeing to redesign the fan cowl structure on its 737 NG aircraft. The FAA followed up with an airworthiness directive in 2023, setting a completion deadline of 2028. Southwest Airlines said Thursday it has already finished the required work on roughly 80% of its affected planes and is on pace to beat the July 2028 deadline.
Bedford said the new Ryanair investigation is prompting the FAA to take a fresh look at how it handled the fallout from the 2018 crash. “Did we miss something? Way too early to tell — but we can’t take it off the board yet,” he said.
Ryanair equips all of its Boeing 737 NG planes with CFM56 engines produced by CFM International. The 737 NG is the generation of the aircraft that came before the current MAX model.
