A Ryanair passenger has spoken publicly for the first time about the moment he was partially sucked out of a plane window after it was dislodged on a flight from Greece to Germany.
Ljubisa Karovic, 61, was asleep onboard flight FR1879 when a sudden blast caused by a broken window sent the journey spiralling into chaos.
The force of the cabin depressurisation pulled him towards the window, leaving the upper half of his body outside the aircraft before fellow passengers managed to pull him back inside.
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After the aircraft was forced to return to Thessalonikimake and make an emergency landing, Mr Karovic was rushed to hospital where he was treated for his injuries.
The Serbian businessman, who was seated in row 11F, said the deafening sound of the “explosion” is something he relives every night.
“The explosion is what I remember,” Mr Karovic told The Guardian.
“It’s the noise before the chaos, the noise that is always there when I close my eyes to sleep.”
But Mr Kavoic has not just sustained mental scars, he is also living in physical pain as he wears a neck brace to support his head.
“I am lucky. I don’t remember much and my head and neck still hurt but I am still alive,” he added.
Despite the haunting effects of the ordeal as he recovers from burns and bruising, Mr Kavoic said he is grateful he survived.
“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.”
His lawyer, Vasilis Tsiaras, said Mr Karovic was lucky to be alive after he lost conscious several times during the horrifying ordeal.
“Ljubisa dipped in and out of death,” he told the outlet.
“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.”
Mr Karovic’s heartbreaking recount of events comes after his wife, Svetlana Grković, detailed her perspective of the incident.
“It was as if a part of the engine broke off and hit the window where my husband Ljubiša was sitting,” she told Serbian outlet Nova in a translated quote.
“Luckily, he was strapped in. As the window broke, decompression occurred in the cabin.
“The pressure pulled Ljubiša, 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.”
“My husband has serious injuries, he’s wearing a collar, he’s in shock and he hears about planes and he’s shaking. I’m also in a bad psychological state, I’m taking tranquillisers. I was afraid for our lives. I was afraid the plane would crash,’ she told ERT News.
Ryanair said it’s crew did a “phenomenal job” responding to the emergency, while chief executive Michael O’Leary said investigators were still working to determine what caused the incident.
“It looks like a foreign object damage to the engine on take-off at Thessaloniki but … we can’t say that definitively,” he said, as cited by the Mirror.
He also said the Boeing 737, operated by Ryanair subsidiary Malta Air, had undergone servicing and a full overhaul within the past two years.
