Story by Telegraph reporters
A Ryanair passenger “sustained serious injuries” after being partially sucked out of a plane when an engine part shattered a window, investigators have said.
Ljubisa Karovic, 63, was dragged back into the cabin by fellow passengers shortly after take-off on a flight from Thessaloniki, Greece, to Memmingen, Germany. He was cared for by a doctor until the aircraft landed safely.
A Ryanair passenger “sustained serious injuries” after being partially sucked out of a plane when an engine part shattered a window, investigators have said.
Ljubisa Karovic, 63, was dragged back into the cabin by fellow passengers shortly after take-off on a flight from Thessaloniki, Greece, to Memmingen, Germany. He was cared for by a doctor until the aircraft landed safely.
The preliminary report into flight FR1879 by the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) revealed the window next to his seat shattered after it was hit by an engine part.
On July 10, the Ryanair flight, operated by subsidiary Malta Air, took off normally, but as the Boeing 737 jet climbed through 16,000ft, pilots received a warning of “high vibration” from the right-hand engine.
Ljubisa Karovic and his wife Svetlana Karovic – Facebook
The NTSB report said: “They reduced the engine power and initiated the ‘Engine High Vibration non-normal checklist’. Shortly after, the engine vibration indication was reduced. The crew subsequently continued the climb on autopilot.”
But the engine vibrations then increased significantly before the pilots “heard a loud bang” and the cabin altitude warning began to sound.
“The flight crew donned their oxygen masks, declared an emergency, and began an immediate descent,” said the NTSB.
Mr Karovic, a Serbian national, was asleep in seat 11F when a part flung from the engine hit the adjacent window. It shattered and he “was partially lodged in a damaged cabin window” nine minutes and 30 seconds after take off.
The preliminary NTSB report said: “Other passengers were assisting and managed to pull the injured passenger back into the cabin. The injured passenger was subsequently moved to row 12 and was attended to by a passenger who was a doctor throughout the remainder of the flight.”
The report said the right-hand engine “experienced a fan blade separation that resulted in engine fragments striking the fuselage and the right horizontal”. ”.
The broken window on the plane through which Mr Karovic was almost pulled
The cause of the uncontained engine failure may have been a bird strike as the investigators said “bird remains, including feathers, were recovered” from the engine.
After Mr Karovic was moved from his original seat, another passenger went to the forward galley and asked flight attendants “for something heavy and metal to try and block the broken cabin window hole”. The passenger “retrieved a metal box to bring back to row 11”.
Ryanair ‘only offered to rebook flight’ for man almost sucked out of window
The report says: “The crew elected to return to SKG [Thessaloniki] where they made an uneventful landing.” The injured passenger was given medical treatment.
On April 17, 2018, a similar event occurred aboard a Southwest Airlines 737 flight from New York LaGuardia to Dallas Love Field.
The left engine failed, and fragments of the cowling broke a cabin window. In the explosive decompression, a passenger, Jennifer Riordan, was partially sucked out of the window.
Although other passengers and cabin crew pulled her back into the aircraft, she later died. The plane made an emergency landing in Philadelphia.
The Boeing 737 involved in the Ryanair incident has subsequently been repaired. It returned to service on Aug 8, according to data from the tracking service Flightradar24.
Since then, the Boeing 737 has made a number of flights to and from the UK, including trips from Stansted to Dublin, Nice and Venice.
Ryanair told The Telegraph that it would not respond until the investigation ended.
