Save
You have reached the maximum number of items saved.
Remove items from the saved list to add new ones.
AAA
London: A woman who saved her husband from being sucked out of a plane window has admitted she thought they would die together while she held onto his legs.
Svetlana Grkovic and her husband Ljubisa Karovic were flying on a Ryanair flight from Thessaloniki in Greece to Memmingen in Germany on Friday when the window next to them shattered as they dozed in their seats.
Ljubisa Karovich was saved from being sucked out of a Ryanair plane by his wife Svetlana Grkovic.Facebook/Ljubisa Karovich
In her first public account of the emergency, Grkovic said her husband was carried so far out of the window that his head and shoulders ended up outside the plane as she and other passengers tried to pull him back. The plane made an emergency landing in Thessaloniki, where it had taken off from.
“It was as if part of the engine came off and hit the window where my husband Ljubisa was sitting. Luckily, he was wearing a seat belt,” she told the Serbian news outlet. New star.
“When the window broke, there was a depressurization in the cabin. The pressure pulled Lubisha, fortunately, he was fastened, 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 terrible.”
The incident is being investigated by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency.
Ryanair confirmed that the incident occurred on a Boeing 737 NG aircraft operated by its subsidiary Malta Air. The airline said in a statement that “a passenger window was broken mid-flight” but did not give a cause for the potential crash. “The plane landed normally and passengers returned to the terminal,” the statement said.
Related article
Grkovic said some passengers panicked as the air decompressed and oxygen masks were released.
“Some people came to my aid, I remembered one man and one woman. This man helped me a lot, me and Lyubisha,” she said. New star.
“We held Lubisha’s legs together as the plane returned to Thessaloniki airport. I think he was Albanian, thank you very much. I didn’t remember his name, I don’t even know if he told me. I would like to meet him, thank him again in person.”
Her husband was taken to hospital by ambulance when the plane landed.
“I know Lubisha fainted several times,” she said.
“It is important to me that he is alive. He is seriously injured and is in shock. His arm is especially badly damaged, there are burns. He cannot communicate, he does not remember everything that happened.”
Local media in Greece reported that a piece of the engine broke off early in the flight and a window broke, causing the cabin to depressurize. Two airport sources familiar with the incident provided Reuters with the same details.
Boeing 737-800 from Ryanair.
Video posted on social media showed the damaged Boeing 737 suffering an uncontained engine failure with fan blades missing. This type of failure occurs when internal components, such as fan blades, break and puncture the housing, sending debris flying.
Related article
Reuters reported a similar incident in 2018 on another Boeing 737 NG when a fan blade in the engine of a Southwest Airlines plane in the US caused a broken window that partially sucked out a passenger who died from his injuries.
The National Transportation Safety Board responded to the accident by asking Boeing to redesign the fan shroud on the 737 NG, the predecessor model to the 737-MAX.
Receive a note directly from our overseas correspondents about what makes headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.
Save
You have reached the maximum number of items saved.
Remove items from the saved list to add new ones.
David Crowe is Europe correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X or e-mail.