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Ljubisa Karović was injured in an incident during a Ryanair flight on July 10
NEED TO KNOW
- Ryanair passenger Ljubisa Karović was partially sucked out of a window mid-flight during a July 10 trip from Greece to Germany
- In an interview with The Guardian, Karović recalled hearing the loud noise of a window shatter before the ordeal happened
- He is currently required to wear a neck brace for at least six weeks
A 61-year-old passenger is remembering his harrowing ordeal of being almost sucked out of an aircraft window during a Ryanair flight over Europe more than a week ago.
“Its the noise before the chaos, the noise that is always there when I close my eyes to sleep,” Ljubisa Karović told The Guardian in an interview published on Tuesday, July 21, about what happened to him aboard the aircraft.
Karović was partially sucked out of the aircraft headfirst when a window became “dislodged inflight” on July 10 according to a statement shared with PEOPLE from Ryanair, the Ireland-based airline he was flying.
The Boeing 737 was flying from Thessaloniki, Greece to Memmingen, Germany at the time of the incident, which forced the plane to make an emergency landing as one passenger requested emergency assistance.
In his interview with The Guardian, Karović said that the loud noise of a window shattering roused him from his sleep aboard the plane where he sat in his window seat.
Karović’s lawyer, Vasilis Tsiaras, told the British news outlet that his client “was hurled out of the window from his chest up and immediately lost consciousness” after the cabin lost pressure.
“He was on that plane heading to Germany to celebrate his brother’s birthday,” Tsiaras continued. “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.”
Svetlana Grković, Karović’s wife, previously told Serbian outlet Nova that the plane had been in the air for nearly a half hour before the incident.
“It was as if a part of the engine broke off and hit the window where my husband, Ljubiša, was sitting. Luckily, he was strapped in,” Grković said in a translated interview, adding his body was “sticking out of the plane.”
Grković alleged that the cabin crew did not do anything to help her husband but rather the passengers.
“One man, I think he was an Albanian, was incredible,” she said, per The Guardian. “He did all he could to bring him in and then tried to block the window, first with a bag that was immediately sucked out and then with a suitcase, which worked. We are eternally grateful to him.”
The incident lasted about two minutes during which Karović reportedly was half in and out of the plane. He recalled to The Guardian of being told by others that he fainted twice and had a swollen face due to the rush of air.
Following the incident, Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary initially blamed a “foreign object” for the damage to the plane’s engine.
“Initial indication would suggest it looks like a foreign object damage to the engine on takeoff at Thessaloniki, but we don’t have — we can’t say that definitively,” O’Leary told analysts after reporting the company’s results for April-June, Reuters reported.
O’Leary also said that the plane was 18 years old, but its engine was fully serviced and overhauled within the last two years.
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Of the allegation that the cabin crew did not help Karović when he was almost sucked out through the plane’s window, Ryanair said in a statement to The Guardian that all passengers and cabin crew are required to fasten their seat belts and put on oxygen masks when an aircraft experiences decompression and rapid descent at low altitudes.
“As soon as the aircraft descended to a safe altitude our cabin crew attended to and assisted Mr Karović, moving him to alternate seats (beside his wife) and arranged for a doctor onboard to sit with them until the aircraft landed safely back in Thessaloniki,” the airline’s statement continued.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said that it would assume control of the investigation into the incident, the Associated Press reported.
Karović says he will be required to wear a neck brace for at least six weeks as doctors decide if he needs surgery.
“I am lucky,” Karović told The Guardian. “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.”
PEOPLE contacted Ryanair for comment on Tuesday, July 21, but did not receive an immediate response.
Read the original article on People
