Ljubiša Karović was sound asleep when the cabin window next to his seat shattered. The 61-year-old Serbian aluminium factory owner had been on Ryanair flight FR1879 for just ten minutes after leaving Thessaloniki, Greece, when the second engine failed. A part of the engine crashed into the window by seat 11F while the plane was 20,000ft above North Macedonia.
The difference in air pressure – called decompression – forced Ljubiša’s body out of the window. His head dangled outside the Boeing 737 for five minutes. He only survived because his wife, Svetlana Grković, who was seated three rows behind in 14C, clung onto his legs.
“Ljubiša Karović partly sucked out of Ryanair window at 20,000ft; wife and passengers pulled him back.”
‘It’s the noise before the chaos, the noise that is always there when I close my eyes to sleep,’ Ljubiša told The Guardian. He remembers little beyond the ‘explosion’ of the window breaking. Friction burns now cover his right arm to his chest.
Svetlana described oxygen masks dangling from above and bottles flying around. ‘None of the cabin crew helped. It was the passengers,’ she said. ‘One man, I think he was an Albanian, was incredible. 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.’
When passengers finally tugged an unconscious Ljubiša back inside, his face was swollen and deformed because of the pressure. ‘My wife reminds me about that,’ he said. He fainted two more times as the plane rapidly flew back to Thessaloniki.
One passenger told Greek station Radio Thessaloniki 94.5: ‘There was a noise like a tyre bursting. There was panic with screaming, yelling and shouting because we immediately lost altitude from the decompression.’
The flight, headed to Memmingen, Germany, was operated by Malta Air, a subsidiary of Ryanair. The low-cost Irish carrier said the aircraft turned back after a passenger window ‘dislodged inflight’ and praised cabin crew for a ‘phenomenal job’.
Ljubiša counts himself lucky. ‘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,’ he said. ‘But maybe it is fate. I believe in God and I thank him every day.’