Neil Sorahan, the chief financial officer of Ryanair, is defending his airline following the mid-flight window incident that occurred earlier this month where a man was partly sucked out of a plane window.
Neil is reassuring travelers that Ryanair's planes are safe and says the company had been in touch with the victim's family.
On July 10, 2026, the Guardian reported that Ljubisa Karović, a 61-year-old Serbian man, was sucked out headfirst after an engine failure resulted in parts smashing an acrylic window. The traumatic incident occurred during a flight from Thessaloniki in Greece to Memmingen near Munich in Germany.
Svetlana Grković, Karović's wife, saved her husband from falling out of the aircraft by holding on to his legs. With the aid of two other passengers, she managed to pull him back in.
“Our customer care team have actively been in touch with the family since the incident,” Neil tells the Guardian, adding that the airline's crew did a phenomenal job and got the aircraft back to Thessaloniki.
The broken window of the Ryanair aircraft.
Neil says the airline awaits the outcome of an investigation into the incident and therefore it's “way too early” to discuss whether Ryanair would have to compensate the couple.
Per the Guardian, despite a re-escalation of the conflict in the Middle East, Neil says bookings remain “very strong,” adding that travelers do not need to worry about the safety of Ryanair’s fleet.
Michael O'Leary, the CEO of Ryanair, says the incident may have been caused by "foreign object damage" to an engine. According to the BBC, the airline's boss insists that the engine on the 18-year-old Boeing 737 plane had been fully serviced and overhauled in the past two years.
