Vesna Vulović

Vesna Vulović (, ; 3 January 195023 December 2016) was a Serbian flight attendant who survived the highest fall without a parachute: . She was the sole survivor of JAT Flight 367 after an explosion tore through the baggage compartment on 26 January 1972, causing it to crash near Srbská Kamenice, Czechoslovakia (now part of the Czech Republic). Air safety investigators attributed the explosion to a briefcase bomb. The Yugoslav authorities suspected that émigré Croatian nationalists were to blame, but no one was ever arrested.

Following the bombing, Vulović spent days in a coma and was hospitalized for several months. She suffered a fractured skull, three broken vertebrae, broken legs, broken ribs, and a fractured pelvis. These injuries resulted in her being temporarily paralyzed from the waist down. Vulović made an almost complete recovery but continued to walk with a limp. She had little to no memory of the incident and had no fear of flying in the aftermath of the crash. Despite her willingness to resume work as a flight attendant, Jat Airways (JAT) gave her a desk job negotiating freight contracts, feeling her presence on flights would attract too much publicity. Vulović became a celebrity in Yugoslavia and was deemed a national heroine.

Vulović was fired from JAT in the early 1990s after taking part in anti-government protests during the breakup of Yugoslavia, but wasn't arrested as the government was concerned about the negative publicity that her imprisonment would bring. She continued her work as a pro-democracy activist until the Socialist Party of Serbia was ousted from power during the Bulldozer Revolution of October 2000. Vulović later campaigned on behalf of the Democratic Party, advocating for Serbia's entry into the European Union. Her final years were spent in seclusion, and she struggled with survivor guilt. Having divorced, Vulović lived alone in her Belgrade apartment on a small pension until her death in 2016.

Early life Vesna Vulović was born in Belgrade on 3 January 1950. Her father was a businessman and her mother was a fitness instructor.

JAT Flight 367

The secondary crew of JAT Flight 367, flying from Stockholm to Belgrade with stopovers in Copenhagen and Zagreb, arrived in Denmark on the morning of 25 January 1972. Nevertheless, Vulović said that she was excited to travel to Denmark because it was her first time visiting the country. The crew had the entire afternoon and the following morning to themselves. Vulović wished to go sightseeing but her colleagues insisted that they go shopping. "Everybody wanted to buy something for his or her family," she recalled. "So I had to go shopping with them. They seemed to know that they would die. They didn't talk about it, but I saw ... I felt for them. And the captain was locked in his room for 24 hours. He didn't want to go out at all. In the morning, during breakfast, the co-pilot was talking about his son and daughter as if nobody else had a son or daughter." "As it was late, we were in the terminal and saw it park," Vulović said. "I saw all the passengers and crew deplane. One man seemed terribly annoyed. It was not only me that noticed him either. Other crew members saw him, as did the station manager in Copenhagen. I think it was the man who put the bomb in the baggage. I think he had checked in a bag in Stockholm, got off in Copenhagen and never re-boarded the flight."

Air safety investigators attributed Vulović's survival to her being trapped by a food trolley in the DC-9's fuselage as it broke away from the rest of the aircraft and plummeted towards the ground. When the cabin depressurized, the passengers and other flight crew were blown out of the aircraft and fell to their deaths. Investigators believed that the fuselage, with Vulović pinned inside, landed at an angle in a heavily wooded and snow-covered mountainside, which cushioned the impact. Vulović said that she was aware of her low blood pressure before applying to become a flight attendant and knew that it would result in her failing her medical examination, but she drank an excessive amount of coffee beforehand and was accepted. Yugoslav authorities suspected that they were to blame for bringing down Flight 367. On the day of the crash, a bomb exploded aboard a train travelling from Vienna to Zagreb, injuring six. A man, describing himself as a Croatian nationalist, called the Swedish newspaper Kvällsposten the following day and claimed responsibility for the bombing of Flight 367. Despite this, he was not arrested. The Czechoslovak Civil Aviation Authority later attributed the explosion to a briefcase bomb.

Paralysis and recovery Following the crash, Vulović spent days in a coma, having fractured her skull and suffered a cerebral haemorrhage. She also suffered two broken legs and three broken vertebrae, one of which was crushed completely. A year after the accident, she was planning on using insurance payments to help her parents to purchase a car, after they had to sell their old one to cover some debt.

Fame

In September 1972, Vulović expressed willingness to resume working as a flight attendant. After the crash, Vulović was honoured by Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito, and the Serbian folk singer Miroslav Ilić recorded a song titled "Vesna stjuardesa" ("Vesna the Stewardess"). Vulović continued to fly regularly, stating that other passengers were surprised to see her on flights and wanted to sit next to her. In 1977, (A 2005 newspaper article published by the Croatian daily Večernji list reports that Vulović married in 1975.)

In the early 1990s, Vulović and her husband divorced. Vulović declined therapy to help cope with her experiences and instead turned to religion, becoming a devout Orthodox Christian. She stated that her ordeal had turned her into an optimist. "If you can survive what I survived," she said, "you can survive anything." Hornung conceded that the pair's evidence was only circumstantial. Vulović said that she was aware of the journalists' claims, but stated that because she had no memory of the event, she could not confirm or deny the allegations. saying that she was "tired" of discussing her fall.

In December 2016, Vulović's friends became concerned for her well-being after she abruptly stopped answering telephone calls. On 23 December, locksmiths discovered her body in her apartment after forcing open the door. She was buried in Belgrade's New Cemetery on 27 December.