Woman reveals how she saved husband from being sucked out of shattered aircraft window

London: The woman who saved her husband from being pulled out of the plane window explained that she thought they would die together while holding her husband’s legs.

Svetlana Grković and her husband Ljubiša Karović were dozing in their seats on a Ryanair flight from Thessaloniki, Greece, to Memmingen, Germany, on Friday, when the glass next to them broke.

Ljubiša Karović was saved from being hijacked from a Ryanair flight by his wife Svetlana Grković.Facebook/Karovic Ljubisa

In her first public statement about the emergency, Grković said she pulled her husband’s head and shoulders out the window so far that he was outside the plane as she and other passengers tried to drag him back. The flight made an emergency landing in Thessaloniki, where it originally took off.

“It was as if a part of the engine broke off and hit the window where my husband Ljubiša was sitting. Luckily, he was belted,” she said. He told the Serbian news outlet Nova.

“When the window broke, there was a loss of pressure in the cabin. The pressure pulled Ljubiša, luckily his seat belts were fastened, but half of his body was out of the plane. I reacted immediately and grabbed his legs.

“I thought, ‘If we die, we die together.’ It was scary.”

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency is investigating the incident.

Ryanair confirmed that the incident occurred on a Boeing 737 NG operated by subsidiary Malta Air. The airline said in a statement that “the passenger window was dislodged during the flight”, but did not specify the cause of the possible disaster. “The plane landed normally and the passengers returned to the terminal,” the statement said.

Grković said some passengers panicked when the pressure in the air decreased and oxygen masks were turned on.

“Some people came to my aid, I remembered a man and a woman. That man helped me a lot, me and Ljubiša,” he said. Nova.

“We held Ljubiša’s legs together as the plane returned to the airport in Thessaloniki. 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 again to thank him in person.”

When the plane landed, his wife was taken to the hospital by ambulance.

“I know that Ljubiša lost consciousness several times,” he said.

“It is important for me that he lives. He is seriously injured and in shock. He has particularly severe injuries and burns on his hand. He cannot communicate; he does not remember the entire incident.”

Local media in Greece reported that an engine part failed early in the flight, causing a window to break and depressurizing the cabin. Two airport sources with knowledge of the incident gave the same details to Reuters.

A Ryanair Boeing 737-800.

A video posted on social media showed an uncontrolled engine failure on the damaged Boeing 737, with fan blades missing. Such a failure occurs when internal components, such as fan blades, break apart, cracking the case and causing debris to fly.

Reuters A similar incident occurred on another Boeing 737 NG in 2018, the company said, adding that the fan blade in the engine of a Southwest Airlines plane in the US caused the window to break and partially pulled out a passenger, who died from injuries.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board responded to the crash by telling Boeing to redesign the fan cowl structure on the 737 NG aircraft, its predecessor to the 737-MAX.

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