BOISE, Idaho -- A flight nurse was sucked out of an airplane at 20,000 feet when the window he was sitting next to suddenly blew out. He was left dangling in the sky, forced to battle 200-miles per hour wind and fight his way back into the plane.

For flight nurse Chris Fogg, June 27th is a day he'll never forget. It began as a part of his routine, transporting a patient to a Seattle hospital aboard a twin-engine piper turbo prop.

But while the plane was cruising at 20,000 feet, disaster struck.

"It was just a big loud bang, a big pop right next to me," Fogg said.

The window adjacent to Fogg's right shoulder exploded, causing a drastic change in pressure that sucked him right out the window, head first.

With only his legs and left arm remaining inside the plane, Fogg fought to break free from the intense suction.

"I have a pretty vivid memory of seeing the tail of the plane and what was left of my headset whacking the side of the plane," he said.

But the nurse for Ada-Boi Critical Care, a business owned by his family, said the headset he uses to talk to the pilot during patient transports likely kept him from being knocked out from the original impact when the window exploded. One second he was chatting with the patient and pilot, Fogg said, the next he was hanging out the window, looking backward toward the tail of the plane.

"It (the headset) took the major brunt of the blow going through the window. I think that's what saved me from having severe injuries. If I had been knocked out, I think I would have been pulled completely through," Fogg said. "I was struggling with every ounce of my being. My left arm was keeping me from going out. I was holding the wall."

The pilot put the plane into a dive and rushed to 10,000 feet in order to equalize the pressure. Fogg then pulled himself through the window and back into the plane.

"I have a vivid image of the tail, and of my headset whacking the fuselage of the plane, because it was still hooked up (inside)," said the resident of Meridian, a suburb of Boise.

Fogg said he struggled to finally break the seal his body had formed against the window frame and pull himself back into the cabin. By then, he was bleeding heavily from the head and arm wounds.

The plane made an emergency landing in Boise a few minutes later.

"It wasn't my day to die. I truly felt like I was blessed," Fogg said.

Fogg is six feet tall and weighs 220 pounds. He believes his size kept him from being completely sucked out of the plane.