Ryanair Reassures on Safety After Mid-Flight Window Incident, Awaits Investigation

Ryanair has moved to reassure travellers that its planes are safe after a passenger was saved from being sucked out of a window mid-flight and said it had been in touch with his family.

This month, Ljubisa Karović was sucked out headfirst after an engine failure resulted in parts smashing an acrylic window during a flight from Thessaloniki in Greece to Memmingen near Munich in Germany.

His wife, Svetlana Grković, saved the 61-year old from falling out of the aircraft by holding on to his legs and managed to pull him back in with the help of two other passengers.

“Our customer care team have actively been in touch with the family since the incident,” said Neil Sorahan, Ryanair’s group chief financial officer. “Our crew did a phenomenal job and got the aircraft back to Thessaloniki. Everyone bar none walked off the aircraft. It was a great job done by the cabin crew and the pilots.”

Sorahan said it was “way too early” to discuss whether Ryanair would have to compensate the couple while the airline awaited the outcome of an investigation into the incident.

Last week, the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it would lead the investigation into the incident, which occurred on a Boeing 737 operated by the Ryanair subsidiary Malta Air.

“We welcome the appointment of the NTSB,” Sorahan said. “They are going to do a full, independent investigation. We are participating fully. We have people on the ground actively involved in assisting.”

His comments are the first by Ryanair on the incident, bar a short statement released in the immediate aftermath.

Sorahan said bookings remained “very strong” heading into the peak summer season, despite a re-escalation of the conflict in the Middle East. He added that travellers did not need to worry about the safety of Ryanair’s fleet.

He said neither the Federal Aviation Administration nor the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, which regulate civil aviation in the US and Europe respectively, have required Ryanair to make any operational changes.

“We are very happy with safety across all of our five airlines, they operate at the highest standards of European aviation regulations,” Sorahan said. “We have a relatively young fleet and are very pleased with safety and maintenance within Ryanair group.

“There [have been] literally hundreds of millions of flights on these [Boeing 737] aircraft globally since they first came into being. They are probably the safest aircraft ever built, they are highly maintained and we have very well-trained crew.”

Sorahan also criticised the EU’s new digital entry-exit system (EES), which requires non-EU citizens to register fingerprints and a photo when they arrive. EES has nearly tripled the time it takes travellers to get through passport control at some of Europe’s most popular airports.

“People are starting to travel in greater numbers [heading into summer] and they will need to get to airports early and expect delays,” Sorahan said. “[EES] has been badly implemented and is another challenge British families have to face this summer.”

Last week, Ryanair said UK passengers faced hours of extra queueing time and called for airports to be allowed the flexibility to not use the system at peak times during the holiday period.

The airline published a list of “hotspots” where passengers were “experiencing significant delays due to slow processing times and excessive passport control queues on both arrivals and departures”.

The list includes Lisbon, Tenerife South, Madrid, Lanzarote, Alicante, Málaga, Milan Bergamo, Milan Malpensa, Verona, Paris Beauvais, Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt Hahn, Kraków and Budapest.

Ryanair reported on Monday that profits after tax slumped by more than a third (34%) to €538m (£457m) in the three months to the end of June. It said this was mainly due to the price of jet fuel doubling amid the Iran war.

The increase affected the cost of the 20% of fuel the airline needed for its fleet that was not hedged against price fluctuations.

Ryanair’s passenger numbers rose 6% year on year, from 57.9 million to 61.3 million, although the increase came at the same time as a 6% drop in the price of an average fare.

“Fares required stimulation as the Middle East conflict led to consumer hesitancy, concerns about EU jet fuel shortages, economic uncertainty and later bookings,” the airline said.

Ryanair’s operating costs rose 11% year on year in the quarter to €3.81bn, as total revenues increased 1% to €4.38bn.