Just 10 minutes after takeoff, a Boeing 737’s jet engine broke off and hit the side of the plane, breaking a passenger’s window, which resulted in the passenger nearly getting sucked out as the plane was thousands of feet above ground.
Sixty-one-year-old Ljubisa Karović was in a window seat in row 11F and was partially sucked out of the plane after the midair disaster on the July 10 flight, according to a report released by the National Transportation Safety Board on Thursday. His wife and other passengers grabbed hold of him and pulled his head and shoulders back inside the plane.
The plane took off from Thessaloniki, Greece, and was headed toward Memmingen, Germany, but returned to Greece for an emergency landing. Just minutes before the engine broke off, pilots got a warning for high engine vibrations. Two minutes later, the pilots “heard a loud bang” and lost their autopilot capability.
“Examination of the airplane revealed that the No. 2 engine, a CFM International model CFM56-7B26, experienced a fan blade separation that resulted in engine fragments striking the fuselage and the right horizontal stabilizer,” the NTSB report stated. The report also revealed bird remains were found in the engine, but it was unclear if the birds were hit right before the jet engine broke or if the bird strike was from a separate incident.
There were two pilots, four flight attendants, and 149 passengers on board.
“I don’t remember much and my head and neck still hurt but I am still alive. It could have been the seatbelt, the fact that I was still strapped in. But maybe it is fate. I believe in God and I thank him every day,” said Karović.
His wife, who was seated three rows behind her husband in 14C, said she rushed over when the window broke. “I rushed over too. None of the cabin crew helped. It was the passengers,” she 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.”
In 2018, a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 fan blade shattered a window and also partially sucked a woman outside of the plane. Like in Karović’s case, passengers scrambled to bring Jennifer Riordan back into the aircraft, but she later died due to the blunt force trauma.
