‘If we die we die together’: Wife clings to man sucked through broken jet window

Wednesday, 15 July 2026

The wife of a man who was partially sucked out of a plane window on a flight from Greece has spoken of grabbing her husband’s legs to save him.

The incident happened on a morning flight from the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki to Memmingen, near Munich, operated by Malta Air, a subsidiary of Ryanair, Europe’s largest budget carrier.

“It was as if a part of the engine broke off and hit the window where my husband Ljubiša was sitting. Luckily, he was strapped in,” Svetlana Grković told Serbian news provider Nova.

“As the window broke, decompression occurred in the cabin. The pressure pulled Ljubiša, luckily he was strapped in, but half of his body was sticking out of the plane. I immediately reacted and grabbed his legs.

“I thought: ‘If we die, we die together’. It was horrible.”

Passengers told Greek media that they heard a loud bang, oxygen masks dropped and the plane began to lose altitude.

One passenger, identified only as Christina, told Radio Thessaloniki that some passengers panicked and screamed and that one passenger was partially sucked out of the window.

“His whole head, neck, shoulders” were pulled out of the window, she said, adding that those seated near him pulled him back in.

'Three of us were pulling him back inside. The oxygen masks dropped and chaos broke out,“ Grković told Greek public broadcaster ERT.

“The decompression was extreme … It felt like we couldn’t breathe. The man who was injured was bleeding and then lost consciousness several times, most likely because of the lack of oxygen and the shock,” one passenger told Radio Thessaloniki.

The 61-year-old passenger suffered neck and shoulder injuries and friction burns, according to a Greek hospital official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The aircraft was a Boeing 737-800, which can seat up to 189 passengers. The narrow-body plane was delivered new to Ryanair in 2008, according to flight-tracking site Flightradar24.

Flight records show that the aircraft climbed past 15,000 feet about six minutes after departure and then immediately descended to about 6000 feet “to burn fuel for 30 minutes” before returning to Thessaloniki about an hour after taking off, Flightradar24 said.

– Stuff and AP