On July 22, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board announced that it had not ruled out age or service issues as causes or contributing factors to an incident that occurred earlier this month. This contradicts a statement made by the CEO of the airline operator involved in the incident, Ryanair. An investigation is currently underway to ascertain the cause of the incident.
Conflicting Statements
On July 10,a passenger was partially sucked out of a broken window in a Boeing 737 after an engine failure occurred. According to video footage and confirmation from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), a piece of the engine broke off the aircraft and smashed the window shortly after take-off from Thessaloniki, Greece. Shortly after, the plane lost pressure, and was forced to make an emergency landing.
The aircraft, which was bound for Germany, was operated by British budget carrier Ryanair. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is currently investigating the incident.
In a letter to Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary, the NTSB announced nothing had yet been ruled out as a cause of the incident by the probe. The letter came in response to the statement released by O’Leary, who claimed that initial findings from the probe suggested that the accident was caused by damage from a foreign object, saying:
“Initial indication would suggest it looks like a foreign object damage to the engine on take-off at Thessaloniki, but we don’t have, we can’t say that definitively.”
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy refuted this claim, emphasising that nothing had yet been ruled out:
“The NTSB has not made any such determination, and our investigators have not yet ruled out age or servicing issues as contributing to this event.”
According to O’Leary, the aircraft was 18 years old and its engine had been fully serviced and overhauled within the last two years.
