Wife of man sucked out of Ryanair jet window reveals battle to save him at 20,000ft

The wife of a man who was sucked through the broken window on a Ryanair flight described how she hung onto his legs.

Ljubiša Karović’s holiday flight from Thessaloniki, Greece, to Memmingen, Germany, turned into a life-and-death battle when his upper body was drawn through the window of the Boeing 737.

His wife, Svetlana Grković, and other passengers became the only thing holding him in as they clung to his legs after part of the engine fell off and broke the window.

The ordeal unfolded when the window smashed in a loud bang shortly after takeoff.

The force of the decompression siphoned Mr Karović through the opening in the shattered window as he was seated next to it.

His wife managed to grab onto his legs for around five minutes, and other passengers helped her to pull the injured man back in, who had lost consciousness while his head was outside the aircraft.

She told Serbian Nova outlet: ‘The pressure pulled Ljubisa, luckily he was strapped in, but half of his body was sticking out of the plane.

‘I immediately reacted and grabbed his legs.

‘I thought: ‘If we die, we die together’. It was horrible.’

She described the chaos that broke out inside the plane as masks fell off due to the pressure drop.

Some people rushed to help her, and Ms Grković remembers ‘one man and one woman.’

‘That man helped me a lot,’ she said, adding that she would like to thank him in person.

Mr Karović was seriously hurt and shocked, with his hand badly burned.

He remains in hospital and is unable to speak after the ordeal, his wife revealed.

What struck her in the moment of panic was the reaction of a mum sitting opposite, who hugged her child so tight she thought she would suffocate him, Ms Grković said.

The plane is said to have flown for another 30 minutes with the broken window before an emergency landing, leaving people fearing they wouldn’t make it, according to the Greek broadcaster ERT.

One passenger, who was sat at the back of the plane, said they didn’t realise at first what had happened.

They said: ‘We thought we were falling.

‘We were wearing oxygen masks, we didn’t know if we would make it.’

A Ryanair spokesperson told Metro: ‘A Ryanair flight from Thessaloniki to Memmingen on Friday morning (July 10) returned to Thessaloniki shortly after take-off when a passenger window dislodged inflight.

‘The aircraft landed normally and passengers returned to the terminal. One passenger requested and received medical assistance on the ground in Thessaloniki. In order to minimise any delay, a replacement aircraft was arranged to bring passengers to Memmingen which departed Thessaloniki at 9:53 local this morning.’

A man was nearly sucked out of an Alaska Airlines flight when the door blew out on the Boeing 737 jet.

He was saved by his seatbelt, but the rapid depressurisation sucked away his iPhone and socks.

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