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 his “right shoulder and head were outside the plane”.

Svetlana Grković, who was travelling with her husband Ljubisa Karović from Greece’s Thessaloniki to Germany’s Memmingen, told BBC Serbia how two other passengers helped pull him back inside after nearly two minutes.

“We pulled him back together,” she said. “His entire face was deformed and blood was pouring from his nose and mouth.”

Speaking to Serbian outlet Nova, Grković said she “immediately reacted and grabbed his legs”, adding: “I thought: ‘If we die, we die together.'”

Grković also told Greek public broadcaster ERT that 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.”

Grković said she has not been able to stop thinking about the ordeal.

“I am constantly doing something to take me mind of what happened, but those images just won’t leave. Yesterday I got into an elevator, and I suddenly felt a terrible sense of suffocation,” she said.

“Now the question is whether we will ever get on a plane again.”

The Ryanair flight was in the air for about 10 minutes, tracking data shows, when it abruptly dropped 9,000ft (2,700m).

In a statement, Ryanair said its Friday morning flight from Thessaloniki to Memmingen returned “shortly after take-off when a passenger window dislodged in flight”.

“The aircraft landed normally and passengers returned to the terminal. One passenger requested and received medical assistance on the ground in Thessaloniki,” the Irish budget airline said.

“We immediately realised there had been a decompression. There were screams… for a moment I thought someone had accidentally opened the emergency door,” Christina, a fellow passenger, told Radio Thessaloniki.

Another passenger, Sofia, told Radio Thessaloniki: “We thought the plane was going down. 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.”

The aircraft – believed to have been an 18-year-old plane – was operated by Ryanair’s subsidiary Malta Air.

Thessaloniki airport’s operator Fraport Greece said “the incident is currently under investigation by the Hellenic Air and Rail Safety Investigation Authority”.

The 61-year-old is still in hospital, according to local media, while the investigation into what caused the incident continues.

Because the aircraft is a US-built Boeing 737-800 and the incident occurred in North Macedonian airspace, investigators from multiple international aviation authorities are assisting the investigation, including Boeing, the US Federal Aviation Administration and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency.

Additional reporting by Nikos Papanikolaou.