Last Friday, a passenger on a Ryanair flight between Thessaloniki (Greece) and Memmingen (Germany) was sucked out of the airplane window after it came loose mid-flight. The passenger, a 61-year-old Serbian man, survived thanks to his seatbelt and the efforts of other passengers to prevent him from being thrown into the void. The plane was flying at 6,000 meters altitude.
Among the passengers who prevented the affected man, Ljubisa Karovic, was his wife, Svetlana Grkovic. Days after the incident, she explained her reaction to what happened on the Serbian TV channel Nova.
The affected man “cannot communicate, does not remember everything that happened, and trembles when he hears talk about planes”
“If we die, we will die together,” she thought when she heard the crash from the window and saw her husband being sucked outside. “It was as if a part of the engine had come loose and hit the window next to where my husband was sitting,” she says. “When the window broke,” she continues, “there was a decompression in the cabin. The pressure difference dragged Ljubisa out. Luckily, he was wearing his seatbelt, but half of his body was outside the plane. I reacted immediately and grabbed his legs.” Ljubisa Karovic remained with half his body outside the aircraft for almost two minutes.
The victim’s wife, who is recovering from the incident, revealed that the first to assist her husband was the girl sitting next to him. “She held one of his hands,” she explains. “Together with two other people, we managed to pull him back inside while the oxygen masks dropped and chaos ensued.”
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During the brief but eternal time when Ljubisa Karovic believed he would fall into the void, he lost consciousness three times. They tried to cover the gap with a suitcase, “but it was thrown away,” Grkovic recalls.
The victim’s partner criticizes Ryanair: “No one from the company has contacted us”
The affected man remains in the hospital. He suffers from various serious injuries, including burns caused by friction between his body and the fuselage. “He cannot communicate, does not remember everything that happened,” his wife explains. “He is in shock, and when he hears talk about planes, he starts to tremble. I am also very psychologically affected; I am taking tranquilizers. I feared for our lives. I feared the plane would crash,” she adds.
The aircraft flew for another 30 minutes before making an emergency landing at the Greek airport from which it had taken off. In the interview on Serbian television, the couple was critical of Ryanair’s handling of the incident: “The flight attendants did not help at all, and so far, no one from the company has contacted us.” Ryanair’s statement after the incident explained: “The aircraft landed normally and passengers returned to the terminal. One passenger requested and received medical assistance on the ground in Thessaloniki.”
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