‘We die together’: Wife of man nearly sucked out of Ryanair plane speaks out
A woman who held desperately to her husband’s legs as he was partially sucked out of a plane window has revealed she thought they were both going to die.
Source: X
A woman who held desperately to her husband’s legs as he was almost sucked head-first out of a Ryanair plane window has revealed she thought they were both going to die.
Fellow passengers had to pull Ljubisa Karović back after he was partially sucked out of the dislodged plane window, a few minutes after takeoff on a flight from Greece to Germany last Friday.
“We pulled him back together,” Karović’s wife Svetlana Grković told BBC Serbia on Tuesday (local time). “His entire face was deformed and blood was pouring from his nose and mouth.”
Grković said her 61-year-old husband’s “right shoulder and head were outside the plane”, and she “immediately reacted and grabbed his legs”.
“I thought: ‘If we die, we die together’,” she said.
The incident happened on a morning flight from the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki to Memmingen, near Munich, operated by Malta Air, a subsidiary of Ryanair, Europe’s largest budget carrier.
Ryanair said in a statement the Boeing 737-800 “returned to Thessaloniki shortly after takeoff when a passenger window dislodged in-flight”.
Karović suffered neck and shoulder injuries and friction burns. Grković said he was “seriously injured and in shock”.
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“It’s important to me that he’s alive … his hand is particularly badly injured, and he’s got burns. He’s not able to communicate, he doesn’t remember the whole event,” she said.
Ljubisa-Karovic and Svetlana Grikovic were returning from a holiday in Greece. Photo: Facebook
She told Greek public broadcaster ERT that “whenever he hears about aeroplanes he starts shaking”.
“I am also in a very bad psychological state… I feared for our lives. I was afraid the plane was going to crash,” she said.
“I am constantly doing something to take me mind of what happened, but those images just won’t leave. Yesterday I got into an elevator, and I suddenly felt a terrible sense of suffocation.
“The question is whether we will ever get on a plane again.”
Grković told ERT that it seemed like part of the plane’s engine had broken off, smashing the window next to Karović and causing decompression in the cabin.
Other passengers also reported hearing what sounded like an explosion. Oxygen masks dropped and the plane began to lose altitude.
One passenger, identified only as Christina, told Radio Thessaloniki that passengers panicked and screamed, and that Karović’s “whole head, neck, shoulders” were pulled out of the window.
He was wearing his seatbelt, which has been credited with saving his life.
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“Most people had fallen asleep, we had closed our eyes. We heard a sound, I’d describe it like a tire bursting … but very loud,” Christina said. “We knew straight away we lost pressure because we lost altitude.”
She said there were “screams, shrieks, shouting”.
Videos recorded inside the plane and shared by Radio Thessaloniki showed passengers wearing oxygen masks. Another appeared to show the blown-out window, with a man seated nearby wearing an oxygen mask. A third video, apparently filmed after the aircraft landed, showed first responders in the aisle.
A technical adviser appointed by the family has told the BBC the incident apparently began with a failure in the aircraft’s right engine, causing debris to strike and shatter the cabin window before the rapid loss of cabin pressure. That assessment has not been confirmed by investigators.
Ryanair has not said what was behind the incident. But the US National Transportation Safety Board said it was notified that the flight turned back because of “a right engine issue and cabin decompression”.
The NTSB, the US federal agency that investigates aviation and other major transportation incidents, said it was ready to assist the investigation. The probe will be led by the Aircraft Accident and Incident Investigation Committee of the Republic of North Macedonia, because the incident occurred in that country’s airspace.
Shye Gilad, a former airline pilot who teaches at Georgetown University’s business school in the US, said the incident underscored the importance of keeping seatbelts fastened while seated. A rapid decompression could create a brief but powerful suction effect near a cabin breach before pressure stabilised, he said.
“The seatbelt can help in those first few seconds. It’s a difference maker, and people should keep their seatbelts fastened at all times,” Gilad said.
He said such events were “very rare” because “it takes a lot to breach a cabin”.
Flightradar24 said records showed that the Malta Air Boeing climbed past 15,000 feet (4500 metres) about six minutes after departure and then immediately descended to about 6000 feet (1800 metres) “to burn fuel for 30 minutes” before returning to Thessaloniki about an hour after take-off.
The plane landed normally and passengers returned to the terminal. On passenger had medical assistance on the ground in Thessaloniki, the airline said.
A replacement aircraft was later provided to fly the passengers to Germany.
-with AAP
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