‘If we die, we die together’: wife of Ryanair passenger almost sucked through window speaks | Ryanair

The woman who saved her husband from being completely pulled from the Ryanair plane during the flight said she thought: “If we die, we die together” as he held his legs.

Ljubisa Karović died on Friday after falling headlong during flight after an engine failure resulted in pieces of acrylic glass breaking.

“Half of his body was out of the plane,” his wife Svetlana Grković told Serbian news channel Nova.

“I reacted immediately and grabbed his legs,” he said, adding that he remained “up to his chest outside” for two minutes.

Grković said she managed to pull her husband, who lost consciousness three times, into the plane with the help of two passengers.

He said many people fled their seats to other parts of the plane for safety as cabin pressure decreased.

The couple were on a flight operated by Ryanair subsidiary Malta Air from Thessaloniki, Greece, to Memmingen, Germany, for about 10 minutes when the plane suddenly dropped to 2,700 meters (9,000 ft), tracking data showed.

Passengers told local media that Karović kept her seat belt on and helped hold her down while her upper torso was outside the plane.

Grković said the 61-year-old was still in hospital in Greece and was “seriously injured and in shock.”

“It’s important to me that he’s alive,” he said. “Especially his hand is seriously injured and has burns. He cannot communicate and does not remember the entire incident.”

“Some people came to my aid, I remember a man and a woman,” he added. “This man helped me, Ljubisa and me a lot. I think he was Albanian, thank you very much. I don’t remember his name, I don’t even know if he told me. I would like to meet him and thank him personally again.”

Images and videos show that broken glass caused oxygen masks to fall from the ceiling as the cabin depressurized.

One passenger told Radio Thessaloniki that those on board “thought the plane was going to crash.”

“The decompression was extreme,” he said. “It seemed like we couldn’t breathe. The injured man was bleeding and lost consciousness several times, most likely due to lack of oxygen and shock.”

Another passenger told the radio station he heard screams and “for a moment I thought someone had accidentally opened the emergency door.”

Thessaloniki airport operator Fraport Greece said the incident was “currently being investigated by the Hellenic Air and Rail Safety Investigation Authority”.

Ryanair said in a statement after the incident that the plane “returned to Thessaloniki shortly after take-off after the passenger window became dislodged during the flight.”

“The plane landed normally and the passengers returned to the terminal,” the airline added.

Ryanair provided a replacement aircraft and the other passengers on the flight were able to complete the journey to Memmingen the same day.