A routine Ryanair flight from Greece to Germany turned into a mid-air emergency when an engine part broke off and shattered a cabin window, opening the aircraft to the high-altitude slipstream. What followed was a two-minute fight to keep one passenger from being pulled out of the plane entirely.
He was pinned half-outside the aircraft while three strangers and his own wife fought to haul him back in. His seatbelt was the only thing that kept the slipstream from taking him.
The failure partially sucked 61-year-old Ljubisa Karovic out of the Malta Air-operated jet somewhere over Greece, at an altitude of roughly 16,000 feet.
His wife, Svetlana Grkovic, unbuckled her own seatbelt and grabbed his legs as half his body hung out in the wind. She held on for two minutes.
“If we die, we die together,” she thought.
A woman seated beside Karovic and a man from across the aisle joined her, and together they pulled him back inside. His fastened seatbelt held him in place long enough for that to work.
The flight made an emergency landing in Thessaloniki. Karovic was hospitalized with severe upper-body trauma, facial injuries, and shock.
The accident is now the subject of an international aviation safety investigation.
Thanks for spending time with Thought Catalog. Connect with us on Facebook and browse the rest of our website.
