A passenger was nearly sucked out the window of a Ryanair airplane after it “detached” during the flight – with his head and shoulders outside the window before other passengers pulled him back inside.

The passenger, a Serbian man travelling from Thessaloniki in Greece to Memmingen in Germany, has since been hospitalised with friction burns but is said not to be seriously injured.

Local media said the incident had occurred when the window had been impacted by a piece of debris that detached from one of the plane’s engines.

“Most of us had fallen asleep, we had closed our eyes; there was a noise, like a tyre bursting,” Christina, a passenger on the same flight told Radio Thessaloniki.

“We immediately realised there had been a decompression.”

“There were screams … for a moment I thought someone had accidentally opened the emergency door,” the woman said.

“The masks dropped and there was a strong smell; the head and shoulders of one passenger were outside the window.”

“Fortunately, he hadn’t taken off his seat belt,” she added

In a statement, Ryanair said that the flight “returned to Thessaloniki shortly after takeoff when a passenger window detached during the flight.”

“The aircraft landed normally and the passengers returned to the terminal,” it said.

The Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) later told the BBC that it “is aware of the incident involving a Ryanair group aircraft, registered and operated by Malta Air, departing Thessaloniki this morning”.

“The IAA will provide any requested assistance to the aviation safety investigation authority in Greece and the Maltese Civil Aviation Directorate, to aid their investigation,” it said.