Ryanair Passenger Almost Sucked Out of the Plane After Window Shatters Mid-Climb — Fellow Passengers Pulled Him Back In, and China Is Trying to Bury the Story of a Plane That Crashed Into Beijing’s Tallest Skyscraper — Plus More Travel News!

Here are this week’s travel news headlines from around the web and interweb I found the most interesting. Take a look:

• A Ryanair Passenger Was Almost Sucked Out of the Plane This Morning After a Window Shattered Mid-Climb. Fellow Passengers Pulled Him Back In.

This happened  yesterday morning and it is genuinely terrifying. Ryanair Flight FR1879, a Boeing 737-800 operated by Malta Air, took off from Thessaloniki, Greece headed to Memmingen, Germany at 6:12 a.m. About eight minutes after takeoff, while climbing through roughly 15,000 feet, a piece of the engine reportedly broke loose and hit a cabin window, shattering both the inner and outer panes. The cabin depressurized immediately. Oxygen masks dropped. A 61-year-old Serbian passenger in the window seat had his head and shoulders sucked outside the aircraft. His wife and nearby passengers grabbed him and physically pulled him back inside. “Fortunately, he hadn’t taken off his seat belt,” one witness said. The plane circled for nearly an hour to burn off fuel before landing back in Thessaloniki. The passenger was hospitalized with friction burns but is expected to be okay. A replacement aircraft eventually flew the remaining passengers to Germany. Ryanair confirmed the window “detached in-flight” and said the plane “landed normally.” Investigation ongoing. Worst flight nightmare ever almost realized!

• China Is Trying to Bury the Story of a Plane That Crashed Into Beijing’s Tallest Skyscraper. Here’s What We Actually Know.

On June 26, a two-seater light aircraft crashed into Citic Tower in Beijing, the city’s tallest skyscraper. The pilot was killed, 13 others were injured, and the Chinese government’s response was to scrub every video, post, and reference to the incident from the internet, board up the broken windows, and say virtually nothing publicly. Even CCTV, the state broadcaster that is literally across the street from the tower, never mentioned it. What we know: a 66-year-old man identified only as Liu took off from Beijing Shifosi Airport about 30 minutes before impact as part of a formation flight, then inexplicably split off and stopped communicating with air traffic control. An incoming Airbus A330 had to take evasive maneuvers to avoid him. He struck the east side of Citic Tower at 5:55 p.m. His diary was reportedly full of suicidal references, and the government said the crash was caused by “personal reasons.” The bigger issue: Citic Tower sits just four miles from Zhongnanhai, the nerve center of the Chinese Communist Party, in the middle of a strict 39-square-mile no-fly zone that is supposedly enforced by anti-air defenses. None of them stopped Liu. Jalopnik has a thorough deep-dive and it’s worth reading in full.

• A California Startup Is Building a Radical Blended-Wing Aircraft That Could Cut Fuel Use by 50% and Has Onboard Lounges and Four Aisles

JetZero is assembling Jet1, a full-scale demonstrator of its blended-wing-body aircraft, inside Scaled Composites’ hangar in Mojave, California, with a first flight targeted for late 2027. The concept merges the fuselage and wings into a single lifting surface, which dramatically reduces drag and could cut fuel consumption by up to 50% per passenger mile compared to conventional airliners. The production version, called the Z4, would carry around 250 passengers on routes up to 5,000 nautical miles, fitting existing airport gates and jet bridges. Inside, four aisles, onboard lounges, dedicated personal baggage storage, and wider seats replace the familiar narrow tube-and-window layout. United and Alaska Airlines have both expressed interest. The project is backed by a $235 million U.S. Air Force contract. JetZero just broke ground on an 8 million square foot manufacturing campus in Greensboro, North Carolina. This is the most ambitious reimagining of the commercial airplane in decades and as an AvGeek I am absolutely following this one closely.

• Atlanta City Council Approved Delta’s $63M Lounge — but Airport Workers Are Threatening to Shut the Place Down Over Stolen Wages

The Atlanta City Council approved the $63 million funding resolution for the new Delta One lounge at Hartsfield-Jackson this week. But the meeting didn’t go quietly. Union representatives from PACE and NAGE showed up during public comment to describe what they called an ongoing payroll scandal involving contractors Vector Group and SP+. Workers have experienced delayed paychecks, missed pay periods, inaccurate pay stubs, and missing tax forms for months. Union dues have been deducted from paychecks since December 2025 but never remitted to the unions. Insurance premiums have been pulled from checks but never paid, leaving workers to discover their health coverage had quietly been canceled. One PACE representative said workers have lost housing and been denied loans over the chaos. “They are embezzling the money,” she told the council flatly. The unions represent roughly 500 airport employees, including the people who park your car and run the shuttles at Hartsfield-Jackson. City leadership has been asked to fire Vector Group entirely.

• A Passenger Paid £1,900 for a British Airways Upgrade. She Got a Broken Seat That Wouldn’t Recline and No Apology.

A woman paid £1,900 to upgrade herself and her husband to Club World business class on a British Airways long-haul flight. Her husband’s seat reclined fine. Hers was broken and stuck upright for the entire flight. She says no crew member came to apologize or offer any compensation. BA’s response post-flight was a voucher worth a fraction of what she paid. This is unfortunately not an unusual story with BA Club World, a cabin that still uses older reverse herringbone seats on many aircraft and has long drawn complaints about maintenance. When you pay nearly two thousand pounds to lie flat and end up sitting upright the whole flight, “here’s a voucher” really doesn’t cut it.

• Airbus and MTU Just Announced a Joint Venture to Build the World’s First Fully Electric Hydrogen Jet Engine. No Combustion, Just Water.

On July 7, Airbus and MTU Aero Engines announced a planned joint venture to develop a hydrogen fuel cell engine for commercial aircraft. This is different from hydrogen combustion, which still produces nitrogen oxides. A fuel cell converts hydrogen and oxygen directly into electricity through a chemical reaction, leaving water as the only byproduct. MTU already has a 1.2-megawatt ground demonstrator running under the Clean Aviation HEROPS program, proving this isn’t just slides at a conference. The joint venture is expected to be valued at over €1.2 billion, with Airbus holding roughly a 75% stake. JV operations are targeted for 2027, pending regulatory approvals. The real hurdles aren’t engineering, they’re airport hydrogen infrastructure and certification frameworks that don’t exist yet. Rolls-Royce is running its own hydrogen engine tests in parallel. The race to kill the combustion jet engine is genuinely on.

• NATO Scrambled Hungarian Fighter Jets to Intercept a Cathay Pacific Airliner Over Eastern Europe After It Lost Radio Contact

On July 4, Cathay Pacific Flight CX257, an Airbus A350 flying from Hong Kong to London Heathrow, temporarily lost radio contact with Romanian air traffic control while in Romanian airspace. NATO activated its Quick Reaction Alert-Intercept mechanism and scrambled Hungarian fighter jets, which took off at 1:51 p.m., issued a visual warning near the border, and returned to Kecskemét air base once contact was restored. The flight landed safely in London. Cathay Pacific confirmed the incident and said it’s investigating. A senior captain noted that communication dropouts when pilots inadvertently switch frequencies happen more often than people might think, close to once a week across the industry. Still, getting intercepted by NATO fighters over Eastern Europe is not exactly how you want your Hong Kong to London flight to go.

• JetBlue Just Ran Its Last Flight Out of Manchester-Boston Regional Airport, 17 Months After It Started Flying There

JetBlue operated its final flight out of Manchester-Boston Regional Airport in New Hampshire on July 8, pulling out of a market it entered just 17 months ago in January 2025. The reason: underperforming routes that never reached expected traffic levels and a strategic pivot to pour more resources into the booming South Florida market, where Spirit Airlines’ collapse freed up significant gate slots at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International. JetBlue is growing to 150 daily flights at FLL and is actively hiring former Spirit crew members. The Manchester exit leaves New Hampshire travelers with only Southwest and Breeze Airways as low-cost options. Avelo Airlines also left the same airport earlier this year. Budget air service at regional airports keeps getting thinner.

• Delta Just Crushed Its Q2 Earnings Despite the Highest Quarterly Fuel Bill in Company History

Delta reported Q2 adjusted revenue of $17.67 billion, up 14% year over year and a company record, on adjusted earnings per share of $1.56, both topping Wall Street expectations. CEO Ed Bastian called out record demand for premium cabins, corporate travel, and international routes as the key drivers. Here’s the remarkable part: Delta absorbed $4.4 billion in fuel costs for the quarter, a 77% jump from a year ago and the highest quarterly fuel expense in the airline’s history, and still beat estimates. Delta reinstated its full-year adjusted EPS guidance of $6.50 to $7.50 and also announced a 15% dividend increase starting in Q3. The stock jumped on the news. After a rough stretch of headlines this year, this is genuinely good news for Delta and for the airline industry broadly but know we are all paying for these earnings results and loyalty and crazy award seat prices are also part of these numbers!

Were there any crazy or interesting travel news stories you found interesting that I missed? If so please drop a comment below and include a link to the story! – René