A wife has described the terrifying moment she grabbed onto her husband’s legs after he was pulled toward a shattered window on a Ryanair flight at 20,000 feet.
Svetlana Grković said she reacted on instinct when her husband, Ljubiša Karović, was suddenly thrown into a nightmare scenario during a Friday flight from Thessaloniki, Greece, to Memmingen, Germany.
The couple, who are from Serbia, had been returning from a summer holiday in Greece when chaos erupted on board Ryanair flight FR1879.
According to passengers, there was a deafening bang shortly after takeoff. Moments later, a window beside Karović shattered after what Grković described as part of the engine breaking away and striking the aircraft.
The Boeing 737-800 was forced to turn back and make an emergency landing in Thessaloniki.
“It was as if a part of the engine broke off and hit the window next to which my husband Ljubiša was sitting,” Grković told Nova.
What happened next left passengers fearing they might not survive.
Karović, who had been sitting next to the window, was pulled toward the opening. His wife said she immediately grabbed his legs and refused to let go.
“I reacted immediately and grabbed his legs,” she said. “I thought: ‘If we die, we die together.’ It was horrible.”
Grković reportedly held onto her husband for about five minutes before other passengers were able to help pull him back inside the cabin. Oxygen masks dropped as panic spread through the plane.
“Some people came to my aid,” she said. “I remember one man and one woman. That man helped me a lot, Ljubiša and I.”
Grković said she wants to find and personally thank the passenger who helped save her husband’s life.
Karović remains in the hospital and is believed to be unable to speak because of his injuries. His wife said his hand is badly injured and that he suffered a series of burns, including friction burns. He is also reportedly in severe shock.
She said her husband lost consciousness several times during the ordeal and has little memory of what happened.
One passenger told Informer that Karović was lucky he had not unbuckled his seat belt.
“His wife Svetlana Grković held his legs for five full minutes, until the other passengers ran to help and managed to pull him back into the cabin,” the passenger said.
Another witness told Greek broadcaster ERT that the man’s “head and shoulders were sticking out of the broken window.”
Passengers said they feared the plane “wouldn’t make it” as it flew for around 30 minutes with the damaged window.
One traveler who had been sitting toward the back of the plane said they initially had no idea what had happened.
“We thought we were falling,” the passenger said. “We were wearing oxygen masks, we didn’t know if we would make it.”
The same witness said Karović “had blood on his head” and “fainted several times.”
Footage reportedly shared by a Ryanair flight attendant appeared to show damage to the aircraft after the incident, including a missing engine blade, a smashed window, and a large hole in the side of the engine casing.
A Ryanair spokesman told the Daily Mail that the flight returned to Thessaloniki shortly after takeoff after “a passenger window dislodged inflight.”
“The aircraft landed normally and passengers returned to the terminal,” the spokesman said.
The airline said one passenger requested and received medical assistance on the ground in Thessaloniki.
“To minimise any delay, a replacement aircraft was arranged to bring passengers to Memmingen which departed Thessaloniki at 9.53am local this morning,” the spokesman added.
According to publicly available flight data, the plane landed back in Thessaloniki after one hour and 14 minutes.
A pregnant woman who was also on board was taken to the hospital, according to local media. She is reportedly in good health and has since been released.
The president of the Panhellenic Federation of Public Hospital Employees, known as POEDIN, said the incident came dangerously close to disaster.
He claimed there was “almost a tragedy” and said the damaged window gave way before part of the passenger’s body was pulled outside the aircraft.
Karović is from Vrnjačka Banja in central Serbia, but has spent much of his time in Greece, where he sells and rents apartments in the resorts of Paralija and Olympic Beach.
For Grković, the horror of the flight came down to one instinctive choice: hold on, no matter what.
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