In what Ryanair has almost certainly not yet figured out how to charge a supplemental fee for, a passenger on one of the budget airline’s flights came within a seat belt’s width of becoming the world’s least enthusiastic skydiver last Thursday.
The drama unfolded somewhere over the scenic skies of North Macedonia, when debris — reportedly shed by an engine, because why not — struck and detached a cabin window mid-flight. This is, for anyone keeping score at home, not how windows are supposed to work.
The resulting decompression did what decompression does: it immediately began attempting to redecorate the cabin by sucking things out of it. Unfortunately, one of those “things” was an actual human passenger, who found himself partially through the now-vacant window frame at cruising altitude. Fellow passengers, displaying the kind of heroic quick-thinking that Ryanair definitely cannot take credit for, grabbed the man by his seat belt and hauled him back inside the aircraft. The seat belt, it turns out, is good for more than just the thirty seconds of pantomimed safety demonstration at the start of every flight.
The oxygen masks dropped — presumably to polite bewilderment, since most passengers have mentally checked out during that part of the safety briefing for years. The flight, which had departed Thessaloniki bound for Memmingen, Germany, promptly turned around and headed back, which is honestly the most sensible decision anyone made all day.
The passenger was reportedly uninjured, which is either a testament to human resilience, the tensile strength of budget airline seat belts, or both. Ryanair has not, at time of writing, announced a new “Window Exit Row” fare tier, but we’re not ruling it out.
Source: Boing Boing / RTÉ News
Original story via Boing Boing
