The explosion is what Ljubisa Karović remembers. The thunderous noise of the window shattering that roused him from slumber in seat 11F, his window seat on the early morning Ryanair flight from Greece to Germany. Eleven days and 11 nights later, the Serbian entrepreneur says the bang remains the prelude “to the chaos, the catastrophe” that keeps him awake at night.
Minutes after the blast on 10 July, Karović’s head and right shoulder were sucked out of the dislodged window, leaving him “seriously injured and in shock”, according to the airline. His wife, Svetlana Grković Maksimović, seated three rows behind in 14C, told the BBC she and two other passengers grabbed his legs and held on for several minutes. “We pulled him back together. His entire face was deformed and blood was pouring from his nose and mouth,” she said.
“Ljubisa Karović, 61, was partially sucked out of a Ryanair window after an explosion; he survived.”
The aircraft, an 18-year-old Boeing 737 operated by Ryanair subsidiary Malta Air, made an emergency landing after passengers heard “some kind of explosion”. Karović was taken to hospital, where he spent 11 nights before being discharged. In an interview with the Guardian, the 61-year-old spoke from the porch of his rented flat in Katerini, Greece, a neck brace supporting his head. “I am lucky,” he said. “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.”
Ryanair’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, said an initial investigation suggests “it looks like a foreign object damage to the engine on takeoff at Thessaloniki but … we can’t say that definitively”. He insisted the engine had been fully serviced and overhauled in the past two years. The US National Transportation Safety Board is investigating, with a draft report expected in about 28 days. If the damage is confirmed as external, it could affect Ryanair or Boeing’s liabilities.
Karović’s Greek lawyer, Vasilis Tsiaras, described his client as “being alive by mistake”. “Ljubisa dipped in and out of death,” Tsiaras said. “When the cabin lost pressure he was hurled out of the window from his chest up and immediately lost consciousness. … Imagine that! He looked at death, that other world, and came back.” Karović, who was en route to celebrate his brother’s birthday, now fears the noise that keeps him awake. “I don’t want anyone to suffer what happened to me,” he said. The investigation continues.