The wife of a man whose head and shoulders were pulled from the window of a Ryanair plane shortly after take-off from an airport in Greece has spoken out, telling Greek and Serbian media that half of his body was dangling from the plane.
Svetlana Jurkovic and her husband, Ljubisa Karovic, were traveling from Thessaloniki, Greece, to Memmingen, Germany, on Friday when one of the plane’s windows malfunctioned, sucking the man “from the outside up to his chest,” she told state-owned Greek News Radio. ERT.
“He was out for about a minute and a half to two minutes,” she estimated. “I was sitting in the back, and the girl sitting next to him grabbed his hand. Three of us were pulling him in,” she continued, adding that it was “a mess” and that her husband, whose face she said was covered in blood, lost consciousness several times while receiving little help from the crew.
She recalled being in the air for 30 to 40 minutes, and they both fell asleep when the window shattered. She said her husband was wearing a seat belt, which she told ERT “saved his life.”
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Since the incident, she told ERT that her husband has been in shock and recovering from serious injuries, noting that she is also suffering psychologically.
The 61-year-old passenger suffered neck and shoulder injuries and friction burns, according to a Greek hospital official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Local Greek media reported that a piece of the plane flew off and broke a window shortly after takeoff on Friday, causing oxygen masks in the cabin to fall and suck a passenger’s head and shoulders out of the window.
In a separate interview with Serbian media nova.rs, Jurkovic said the crew ordered passengers to remain calm when people began to panic, and that the pilots executed an emergency landing to return to Thessaloniki.
She told the outlet that she grabbed her husband’s legs with all her might, thinking, “If we’re going to die, we’re going to die together,” adding that the forces that pulled him out the window were overwhelming and that she was screaming for help.
Another passenger came and grabbed him, she recalls, “If it wasn’t for this guy, I don’t know if I could have picked him up. Together we were able to keep him from being completely pulled out.”
The Associated Press reported last week that other people on board told Greek media that they heard a loud bang, that oxygen masks fell off and that the plane began to descend.
One of the passengers, identified by the US agency as Christina, told Thessaloniki Radio: “Most people had fallen asleep, with our eyes closed. We heard a sound – I would describe it as a tire exploding… but it was very loud.”
Upon landing, Karovich received treatment from emergency rescue crews before being taken to hospital, his wife said.
“I don’t think I’m fully aware of what happened. The most important thing is that he’s alive,” she concluded.
The FAA confirmed that a window broke on a flight on Friday and said it stood ready to support the Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority (HCAA) and the NTSB in the investigation.
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