A woman who held the legs of her husband as he was nearly sucked head-first out of a Ryanair cabin window on Friday said “half of his body was sticking out of the plane”.

Svetlana Grković, who was travelling with her husband Ljubisa Karović from Greece’s Thessaloniki to Germany’s Memmingen, told Greek public broadcaster ERT he was “outside up to his chest” for two minutes.

“I immediately reacted and grabbed his legs. I thought: ‘If we die, we die together,'” Grković told Serbian outlet Nova.

With the help of two other passengers, Grković said she was able to pull her husband – who she said lost consciousness three times – back inside.

“The girl who was sitting next to him was holding him by the hand,” Grković told ERT. “Three of us were pulling him back inside. The oxygen masks dropped and chaos broke out.”

“They put a suitcase against the window but it was sucked out,” she added.

Grković said it seemed like part of the plane’s engine had broken off, smashing the window next to her husband and causing decompression in the cabin. Other passengers also reported hearing what sounded like an explosion.

A technical adviser appointed by the family believes the incident began with a failure in the aircraft’s right engine, causing debris to strike and shatter the cabin window before the rapid loss of cabin pressure. That assessment has not been confirmed by investigators.

Passengers earlier told local media that Karović had kept his seatbelt on, helping those on board keep hold of him while his head and shoulders were outside.

Svetlana Grković said her 61-year-old husband is “seriously injured and in shock”.

“It’s important to me that he’s alive… his hand is particularly badly injured, and he’s got burns. He’s not able to communicate, he doesn’t remember the whole event,” she said.

She told ERT that “whenever he hears about aeroplanes he starts shaking”, adding: “I am also in a very bad psychological state… I feared for our lives. I was afraid the plane was going to crash.”