As Ljubisa Karovic sat back in his window seat on Ryanair flight FR1879 from Thessaloniki to Memmingen, he fastened his seat belt and, as he often does during flights, quickly drifted off to sleep.After a relaxing holiday in the Greek sun, he was looking forward to arriving in the city in the south of Germany where he would be a guest at a surprise birthday party for his younger brother.But 20 minutes into his nap, as the ascending Boeing 737 jet reached an altitude of 15,000ft, travelling at a ground speed approaching 500 miles per hour, Ljubisa’s whole world exploded – almost literally.The calm of his doze was shattered by an ear-splitting bang, which he recalls as sounding like a bomb going off, as that window to his right suddenly shattered into shards.The sudden and intense cabin decompression that ensued saw Ljubisa being sucked out of seat 11F into the gaping hole which the shattered window had left behind.Within moments, his right shoulder, arm and head were outside the plane, his senses battered by the change in air pressure, which he now likens to being repeatedly punched by a heavyweight boxer.Almost immediately oxygen masks across the cabin dropped – a protocol so frequently described in mandatory safety drills but rarely seen – and passengers across the jet screamed.But amid the uproar and panic, one passenger acted decisively: Ljubisa’s horrified wife Svetlana Grkovic Maksimovic. Ljubisa Karovic was partially sucked out of the window of his Ryanair flight when a piece of engine debris smashed it at 15,000ft leaving his head outside the gaping hole Mr Karovic was sitting next to his wife Svetlana Grkovic Maksimovic, who grabbed his legs and tried with other passengers to pull him back into the plane The broken window of Ryanair flight FR1879 from Thessaloniki to Memmingen, which forced the plane into an emergency landing Medics arrive on the plane after it landed – as Ljubisa had suffered burns from the high-speed winds lashing his torsoShe was seated in 14C, an aisle seat three rows behind her husband – they had decided against paying the €30 (£25.6) supplement it would have cost to sit together – and had witnessed her husband begin to disappear through the broken window.Without thinking, Svetlana sprang to her feet, lunged forward and grabbed Ljubisa’s legs.Her decisiveness inspired other passengers around them to join her in desperately holding onto her husband to stop him from being sucked out altogether, and falling thousands of feet to his death.It is believed the struggle to hold on to him lasted for up to two minutes. The incident, rarely witnessed in aviation history – and Ljubisa’s miraculous survival on that flight on July 10 – made headlines around the world, and has left investigators desperately trying to establish exactly what led to the window being blown out.But, largely thanks to his wife, Ljubisa survived. After spending six days in a Greek hospital, he is recovering in a seaside villa in Katerini, just outside Thessaloniki, where that fateful flight had embarked from.And today, after two weeks gathering his thoughts and piecing together his shattered memories, Ljubisa gives his fullest account to date of what happened, in an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail.Speaking about his ordeal, Ljubisa, 61, said: ‘I only remember hearing the explosion, not much else. I can remember sitting in my seat and was looking forward to seeing my brother because the whole family was getting together to surprise him for his 60th birthday.‘I fell asleep quite quickly as I usually do on flights. Then there was this deafening explosion, which startled me.’Witnesses describe him as dangling diagonally out of the aircraft ‘like Superman flying through the air’, as the wind lashed his face, contorting it out of shape as if he was a cartoon character.Sounding remarkably calm, he admitted he has no memory of this.‘I don’t remember anything at all because I immediately passed out,’ he said. ‘But the whole thing has been like a nightmare. I can’t even sleep at night, all I can hear when I close my eyes is the sound of an explosion and then there is chaos in my head.‘I lost consciousness when I was hanging out of the plane and then they tell me that I fainted three more times after I was dragged back in. My face was swollen, and my ear was like a giant doughnut.’Ljubisa says he now suffers with acute neck and shoulder pain, and has to wear a neck brace for six weeks. Doctors have warned him that he may require an operation if the pain continues.He was also treated for burns to his face and right hand and arm caused by the high velocity wind lashing his upper torso.Ljubisa, a softly spoken Serbian national, said: ‘I am lucky because my injuries could have been a lot worse. I can’t tell you what was going through my mind when I was hanging outside the plane, but I am grateful that I am still here. Svetlana said she was praying that her husband would be saved as he dangled out of the window