The passenger who was partially sucked out of a Ryanair flight when a window shattered shortly after takeoff has spoken out about the horrifying ordeal that left him “half in and out of the plane.”
On July 10, Ljubisa Karović, 61, was on board a Ryanair flight from Greece to Germany when he was partially sucked out of the airplane through the blown-out window at his seat, 11F.
Karović, a Serbian entrepreneur, told The Guardian that in the nearly 11 days since the near-d£ath experience, it’s the moments before the “chaos, the catastrophe” that keep him awake.
“The explosion is what I remember,” Karović said. “It’s the noise before the chaos, the noise that is always there when I close my eyes to sleep.”
“They tell me I fainted twice and again inside the plane and that my face was briefly swollen and deformed because of the pressure, the rush of air,” he added.
Although the father-of-two suffered serious burns and bruises on his right arm, which span from his armpit to chest, he is counting himself lucky to be alive.
“I am lucky,” Karović told the publication. “I don’t remember much and my head and neck still hurt, but I am still alive.”
Doctors advised Karović that his recovery will be slow and he must be in a neck brace for the next six weeks, by which point they will determine if surgery is necessary.
“It could have been the seatbelt, the fact that I was still strapped in,” Karović said of his survival. “But maybe it is fate.”
“I believe in God and I thank him every day.”
Karović’s lawyer Vasilis Tsiaras, said the 61-year-old, who was traveling to Germany for his brother’s birthday, is “alive by mistake.”
“Ljubisa dipped in and out of d£ath,” Tsiaras said. “When the cabin lost pressure, he was hurled out of the window from his chest up and immediately lost consciousness.”
“At 15,000 feet he ended up with his head and right arm outside the aircraft as it moved at a speed of more than 600km/h [373 mph]. Imagine that!”
“He looked at de@th, that other world, and came back,” the Greek lawyer added.
Karović’s wife, Svetlana, was seated three rows behind him and rushed over to grab her husband, who was “half in and out of the plane” for around one-and-a-half to two minutes.
“None of the cabin crew helped. It was the passengers,” Svetlana 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,” she added.
While Ryanair has defended the performance of the on-board cabin crew, saying they did a “phenomenal job,” Tsiaras disputes this, according to The Guardian.
“We have no complaint with the pilot, who followed the safety protocols and dealt with the situation very well,” Tsiaras said, referring to the rapid descent pilots are forced to make in the event of a plane losing cabin pressure.
“My client fainted two or three times, once outside the aircraft when he was partially sucked out of the window, and twice inside when, again, he lost consciousness. At no point did the cabin crew offer to help,” the lawyer alleged.
Tsiaras argues that, citing witness testimony, “everyone agreed that the crew was in a state of shock, afraid that the plane was about to crash,” and that it was the passengers on board who “rallied” and provided assistance.
However, in a statement to the outlet, Ryanair said that during the process of depressurization and rapid descent, all passengers and crew are required to stay seated and put on oxygen masks.
“As soon as the aircraft descended to a safe altitude, our cabin crew attended to and assisted Mr Karović, moving him to alternate seats (beside his wife) and arranged for a doctor onboard to sit with them until the aircraft landed safely back in Thessaloniki,” and “arranged to have medical assistance standing by on landing in Thessaloniki.”
According to the outlet, Karović’s son, who made the ticket booking on behalf of his father, has been contacted by Ryanair, but neither Karović nor his wife have been contacted or received any support or assistance from the budget airline.
“There are images that come back, the noise of the explosion, the chaos, but I want to recover,” Karović said.
“And, yes, there should be compensation too. Not only emails that have focused on rebooking the flight.”
The US National Transportation Safety Board announced that it will be taking over an investigation into the terrifying incident under Greece’s direction.