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AMERICANALMANAC (Alan Benson) - Ryanair passenger sucked through shattered window at 15,000 feet gives first full account of mid-flight ordeal Mon Jul 27 20:33:55 2026

A 61-year-old Serbian businessman has described the moment a Ryanair jet's window exploded beside him at 15,000 feet, and his wife says she fought a force that nearly pulled him out of the aircraft for good. Ljubisa Karovic was asleep in seat 11F aboard Ryanair flight FR1879 on July 10 when a deafening blast tore […] The post Ryanair passenger sucked through shattered window at 15,000 feet gives first full account of mid-flight ordeal appeared first on American Almanac .

A 61-year-old Serbian businessman has described the moment a Ryanair jet's window exploded beside him at 15,000 feet, and his wife says she fought a force that nearly pulled him out of the aircraft for good. Ljubisa Karovic was asleep in seat 11F aboard Ryanair flight FR1879 on July 10 when a deafening blast tore through the cabin. The window next to him shattered. Cabin pressure dropped. And Karovic, still strapped to his seat, was partially sucked through the opening of a Boeing 737 traveling at nearly 500 miles per hour. He lost consciousness almost immediately. His wife, Svetlana Grkovic Maksimovic, seated three rows behind him in an aisle seat, watched her husband begin to disappear through the fuselage. She lunged forward, grabbed his left arm and legs, and held on while the slipstream fought to take him. An unnamed female passenger beside Karovic and a large Albanian man joined the struggle. Together, they hauled him back inside, a fight Svetlana estimates lasted as long as two minutes. The flight, bound from Thessaloniki, Greece, to Memmingen in southern Germany, had been airborne roughly 20 minutes. The couple was headed to a surprise 60th birthday party for Karovic's brother. Instead, the pilot descended to a safer altitude, oxygen masks dropped, and the plane reversed course for an emergency landing back at Thessaloniki. Svetlana fought the slipstream, and says the crew never moved In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail , given roughly two weeks after the incident from a seaside villa in Katerini, Greece, both Karovic and his wife offered their fullest account yet of what happened aboard that aircraft. Svetlana, 48, described the physical tug-of-war in stark terms: "It was very hard because I was pulling him with all my might from one side and there was this strong force pulling him away on the other. He was going back and forth and at one point, I felt that he was going to be sucked out completely." She said Karovic's head was outside the plane. She could not shout to him, she knew he couldn't hear her, so she prayed silently and kept pulling. The Albanian passenger, whom Svetlana described as "big and strong," played what she called a particularly heroic role. After helping drag Karovic back inside, the man tried to block the gaping window with a bag. The wind sucked it out. He then wedged a large suitcase over the hole, and it held. Svetlana's sharpest criticism, though, was reserved for the Ryanair cabin crew. She told the Daily Mail the flight attendants did nothing during the crisis. "When we were battling to hold onto Ljubisa, the crew didn't do anything, they looked more scared than us. It was only the passengers who helped and were brave." That account raises a pointed question about training and emergency protocol. Passengers, not professionals, performed the rescue. The crew, by Svetlana's telling, froze. The airline has drawn scrutiny over its handling of the incident since the story first broke. Karovic remembers the explosion, then nothing Karovic himself remembers almost none of the ordeal. He told the Daily Mail he fell asleep shortly after takeoff, as he usually does on flights. Then came the blast. "I fell asleep quite quickly as I usually do on flights. Then there was this deafening explosion, which startled me." After that, he said, everything went black. He regained consciousness inside the cabin, already pulled back in, with blood on his face and body. He fainted three more times before the plane landed. His face was swollen. His ear, he said, was "like a giant doughnut." Medical staff and an ambulance met the aircraft at Thessaloniki. Karovic spent six days in a Greek hospital. He suffered burns to his face, right hand, and arm, along with acute neck and shoulder pain. Doctors told him he would need a neck brace for six weeks and warned a future operation might be necessary. Two weeks later, recovering at his villa near Thessaloniki, he also owns a 14-bedroom hotel in Katerini, an aluminum factory, and a property company in Serbia, Karovic was still unable to sleep through the night. "The whole thing has been like a nightmare. I can't even sleep at night, all I can hear when I close my eyes is the sound of an explosion and then there is chaos in my head." He credited his seatbelt with keeping him tethered to the aircraft long enough for his wife and the other passengers to grab hold. And he credited God. "Maybe it was the seatbelt that saved me, because I was still strapped in, and that gave an opportunity to my wife and the other passengers to hold onto me and pull me back inside. But maybe it is fate." Ryanair defends its crew, but has not called the passenger directly Ryanair's version of events differs sharply from the couple's account. Neil Sorahan, the airline's group chief financial officer, praised the crew's performance and insisted the company had been in contact with the family. "Our customer care team have actively been in touch with the family since the incident. Our crew did a phenomenal job and got the aircraft back to Thessaloniki. Everyone bar none walked off the aircraft. It was a great job done by the cabin crew and the pilots." Karovic disputes that characterization. He said the airline's only contact came through emails sent to his son, who had booked the flights. No one from Ryanair called him directly, not once. "All we've had is emails to my son, who booked our flights, asking if we want to rebook and asking how I was. But nobody from the company has contacted me directly, not even a phone call to show any concern." Svetlana called the lack of direct outreach "disgusting." The couple had not even been seated together on the flight. They had declined to pay Ryanair's roughly €30, about £25.60, supplement for adjacent seats. Svetlana ended up in row 14; her husband was in row 11. That gap, ironically, meant she had to sprint forward to reach him when the window blew. The initial reports of the incident drew immediate questions about the aircraft's condition and Ryanair's maintenance practices. Those questions have only grown sharper. Engine failure suspected, but the NTSB investigation is still early The cause of the window failure remains under investigation. Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary said publicly that the incident "looks like a foreign object damage to the engine on take-off at Thessaloniki" but added the airline "can't say that definitively." He noted the 18-year-old Boeing 737's engine had been fully serviced and overhauled within the past two years. A technical adviser appointed by the couple's Greek lawyer, Vasilis Tsiaras, reached a different preliminary assessment. That adviser believes the incident began with a failure in the aircraft's right engine, which sent debris into the cabin window. A post-landing photograph of the engine appeared to show a blade missing. Neither assessment has been confirmed by investigators. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, which has jurisdiction because Boeing, the aircraft manufacturer, is American, has already examined the plane. Sorahan welcomed the NTSB's involvement, saying Ryanair is "participating fully" and has "people on the ground actively involved in assisting." A draft report was expected roughly 28 days from the article's publication. Separately, reports emerged that the same aircraft had returned to an airport the day before the window blowout , adding another layer to the investigation into the plane's mechanical history. Lawyer vows accountability, and accuses crew of cowardice Tsiaras, the couple's attorney, has vowed to pursue "significant compensation" and said the case is about more than money. "My client came back from the brink of death, and we want to make sure that whoever is responsible for this is held accountable. It's not just about compensation but about establishing the truth as to what happened and the condition of this aircraft." He went further, leveling a direct accusation at the Ryanair cabin crew. Tsiaras said crew members were "gripped by fear that the plane was about to crash," which prevented them from helping Karovic while he hung partially outside the fuselage. He added bluntly that "it seems that the crew were more interested in saving their own lives." Ryanair has said it will not comment further while the investigation is ongoing. The airline's earlier statement claimed that once the aircraft descended to a safe altitude, cabin crew attended to Karovic, moved him to a seat beside his wife, and arranged for an onboard doctor to sit with the couple until landing. The airline also said it arranged medical assistance on the ground at Thessaloniki. The gap between those two accounts, passengers say the crew froze; the airline says the crew performed admirably, sits at the center of the looming legal fight. Aviation safety has faced growing scrutiny in recent months, with incidents ranging from near-misses involving drones during landing approaches to runway incursions at major airports. A life upended, and a long road back Karovic, a businessman who splits his time between Serbia and Greece, said the ordeal has fundamentally changed his life. He cannot work. He cannot travel. The thought of boarding an airplane terrifies him. "This incident has completely turned my life upside down. I fear that I'll never be able to live and work the way I used to." He and Svetlana have been together for 10 years and married for three. He has two sons from a previous relationship. The couple had been looking forward to a family reunion in Germany, a surprise party, a flight that should have been routine. Instead, Karovic nearly died at 15,000 feet while the people paid to keep him safe reportedly sat in their seats. Svetlana said she plans to travel to Serbia by car in the coming days. She is not sure she will ever fly again. And if she does, she said, she will never sit in a window seat. When the window blew, it was a wife and a handful of strangers who held on. Ryanair's crew, its executives, and its customer-service emails came later, if they came at all. Accountability should not require that same kind of fight. The post Ryanair passenger sucked through shattered window at 15,000 feet gives first full account of mid-flight ordeal appeared first on American Almanac .