Ryanair CEO responds to claims a man was partially sucked out of a plane window and wife saved him
Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary has disputed claims that a passenger was partially sucked out of a plane window during a flight, calling the allegations ‘delusional’.
The airline boss has responded to Ljubisa Karović’s terrifying claims that his frantic wife had to hold him into his seat to prevent him from being fully dragged out of the plane window.
Instead, O’Leary said that the passenger was dragged ‘towards the window’ in ‘dramatic circumstances’.
The incident happened on 10 July, when Ryanair flight 1879 departed Thessaloniki for Memmingen in Germany.
Advert
According to the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which is leading the investigation, a fan blade separated from the aircraft’s right engine.
The report says the blade then sent fragments into the fuselage, causing the cabin to depressurise.
The injured passenger was 61-year-old Serbian businessman Ljubisa Karović, who spoke to the press after the ordeal.
His wife, Svetlana, described seeing him ‘half in and out of the plane’ and said she and other passengers tried to get him back inside, according to The Guardian.
Speaking after Ryanair’s annual general meeting in Dublin, O’Leary rejected the suggestion that Karović had been partially ejected.
“He wasn’t partially out the window,” he said. “We don’t think any part of his body got out the window, but he was certainly sucked in very dramatic circumstances towards the window.”
He also said Karović had been wearing his seatbelt.
O’Leary then addressed the account given by Karović’s distraught wife, describing her claim that she saved her husband by holding his feet as ‘somewhat delusional’.
"His wife, who claims she saved him by hanging onto his feet, is certainly somewhat delusional given that she was sitting in a seat three rows behind him," he insisted, reports PEOPLE.
Karović’s lawyer, Vasilis Tsiaras, has strongly rejected the CEO’s opinion.
He said there were several eyewitnesses who saw his client partly leave the aircraft and maintained that Karović’s injuries were consistent with his account.
“I have eyewitnesses who were on the plane and saw what happened,” Tsiaras said.
The NTSB’s investigators recorded that a flight attendant found the passenger in seat 11F ‘partially lodged in a damaged cabin window’, with the entire window missing.
The report says other passengers were assisting and ‘managed to pull the injured passenger back into the cabin’.
He was then moved to another row, where a doctor travelling on the flight treated him.
The document also confirms that the cabin lost pressure and oxygen masks were deployed as the pilots began an emergency descent.
The NTSB has stressed that its preliminary information is subject to change, but their initial findings do provide some support to the claim that Karović was pulled into the area of the missing window and had to be brought back into the cabin.
However, they did not identify who - if anyone - pulled him back.
O’Leary has said Ryanair accepts that Karović was injured and is entitled to compensation, but disputes any suggestion of a substantial payout.
He has also said the airline will await the conclusion of the NTSB investigation before contesting the passenger’s account formally.
The investigation is continuing.
Jen Thomas