Was Working On Board An Airliner That Had A Bomb On Board

The woman who survived the highest fall without a parachute back in 1972 has passed away in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

Vesna Vulovic was 22 and a flight attendant on board a Yugoslav Airlines DC-9 on January 26, 1972. The plane was on a route from Stockholm, Sweden to Belgrade which included two stops, Copenhagen and Zagreb. It is suspected that a bomb was planted on the aircraft in Copenhagen, but no arrest was ever made.

The bomb exploded in the front cargo hold at 33,333 feet, according to a report from the U.K. news paper The Mirror. It spun out of control and impacted terrain in two pieces in the Czech Republic. Vulovic was the only survivor of the accident.

She was discovered by a German man with medical training. She was lying half outside the fuselage with the body of another crewmember on top of her. He was able to stabilize her and she was transported to a hospital.

Vulovic had a fractured skull, three crushed vertebrae, and a broken pelvis and ribs. She was not expected to survive. But several days after the accident, she awoke from a coma and asked for a cigarette, according to the report. She was initially paralyzed from the waist down, but eventually regained use of her legs.

Accident analysts suspect that she was pinned in the tailcone of the airplane, which prevented her from being sucked out during the rapid decompression. Then, as the wreckage fell, trees, snow, and the slope of the mountain all contributed to cushioning and slowing down the section of the airplane she was in to allow her to survive.

The Mirror reports that, according to Siberien television, Vulovic was found dead in her apartment in Belgrade on December 23 by friends. There was no cause of death given. She was 66 years old.

She had been recognized as the person who fell from the greatest height without a parachute to survive.

(Image from YouTube video)

FMI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87