A man who was nearly sucked out of a Ryanair plane has described hearing an explosion before the window shattered. Ljubisa Karović, 61, from Serbia, was sleeping on flight FR1879 from Greece to Germany when the window broke, causing objects to fly out and passengers to hold him in place.
Passenger recalls the explosion
“The explosion is what I remember,” Ljubisa, an entrepreneur, told The Guardian. “Its the noise before the chaos, the noise that is always there when I close my eyes to sleep.” He was partially sucked out of the window before being pulled back in. He fainted two or three times during the ordeal, according to his lawyer.
Speaking in a villa outside the Greek coastal city of Thessaloniki, he added: “I am lucky. I don’t remember much and my head and neck still hurt but I am still alive. It could have been the seatbelt, the fact that I was still strapped in. But maybe it is fate. I believe in God and I thank him every day.”
Injuries and aftermath
Ljubisa was left with burns and bruises on his right arm, stretching from his armpit to his chest. He was rushed to hospital after landing. His Greek lawyer Vasilis Tsiaras said: “Ljubisa dipped in and out of death. When the cabin lost pressure he was hurled out of the window from his chest up and immediately lost consciousness. He was on that plane heading to Germany to celebrate his brother’s birthday. Instead, at 15,000ft he ended up with his head and right arm outside the aircraft as it moved at a speed of more than 600km/h. Imagine that. He looked at death, that other world, and came back.”
Wife and passengers react
Ljubisa’s wife Svetlana Grković, seated three rows behind, recalled the moment oxygen masks dropped and how passengers held her husband in place. She said a passenger, possibly Albanian, used a bag then a suitcase to plug the hole.
Ryanair said its cabin crew did a “phenomenal job” during the incident. Michael O’Leary, boss of the firm, said an initial investigation into the incident on 10 July suggests “it looks like a foreign object damage to the engine on takeoff at Thessaloniki but … we can’t say that definitively.” He insisted the engine on the 18-year-old Boeing 737 had been fully serviced and overhauled in the past two years.
