(Newswire.net — December 26, 2016) — Belgrade, Serbia – Vesna Vulovic, an air stewardess who survived the highest altitude fall by a human being, has died in her apartment in Belgrade.
Mrs. Vulovic became famous as the sole survivor of a terrorist attack when JAT Airways DC-9 was blown out of the sky by a bomb. No terrorist group claimed responsibility and the investigation only concluded that the cause of the accident was a bomb which was planted at Copenhagen International airport.
In December 1972, a 22- year-old flight attendant from Serbia, one of the constitutional republics of ex-Yugoslavia, remembered the incident after which she flew only as a passenger.
“Everything that day pointed out that something horrible is about to happen. Ratko Mihic (the captain) spoke of his children over breakfast like he is the only father in the world,” Vulovic told journalists in one of her many interviews. “He felt that he will not see them again,” she added.
Vulovic, a young flight attendant, had boarded by mistake on the flight to Copenhagen, when she only had spent eight months on the job. She had the same name as her more experienced colleague who should have boarded the plane as the intended crew member.
She recalled that she was very excited because she had never visited Copenhagen before. On their way back, Yugoslav Airlines (JAT) DC-9 carrying 28 people exploded over Czechoslovakia at 33,000ft (10,000m). Only Vesna Vulovic survived the accident.
At the moment of the explosion, Mrs. Vulovic was at the tail of the airplane. Her foot had been stuck and that prevented her from falling out of the tail, which had landed on mountain trees, on a thick snowy coat which cushioned the fall.
Decompression, freezing temperature nor the freefall were enough to end Vulovic’s life. “I am like a cat, I have nine lives,” she said recently, after she recovered from a heart attack.
Vesna survived, but not without severe consequences. After being rushed to the hospital, Vulovic fell into a coma for 10 days. The injuries included a fractured skull, two crushed vertebrae, and she had broken her pelvis, several ribs and both legs.
After she woke up, she was paralyzed for months. Years went by and she managed to recover. Unfortunately, not enough to get back in the air as a stewardess.
After the accident, Mrs. Vulovic became a celebrity, proving that the tail is the safest place in an aircraft. She entered the Guinness Book of Records from 1985 for setting the record for the highest fall survived without a parachute.
