In 1972, flight attendant survived 10,160m fall after bomb tore plane apart

Photo: Vesna Vulović (1972)Photo credit: ShutterstockOn 26 January 1972, a Yugoslav Airlines flight broke apart in the sky above Czechoslovakia after an explosion tore through the aircraft. Among the 28 people on board, only one person lived: 23-year-old flight attendant Vesna Vulovic. According to Guinness World Records, she fell from an altitude of 10,160 metres, or 33,333 feet, and survived without a parachute, a feat that still stands as the record for the highest fall survived.The story sounds almost impossible, yet it is documented in official accident records, contemporary reporting and later accounts of her life. Vulovic was found amid wreckage on a snow-covered mountainside near Srbska Kamenice, injured so severely that doctors did not expect her to live. She spent years recovering, but eventually returned to work and became one of the most remarkable survivors in aviation history.A routine flight becomes a disasterVulovic was working as a Jugoslavenski Aerotransport hostess aboard a Douglas DC-9 flying from Stockholm to Belgrade. The aircraft had stopped in Copenhagen before continuing its journey, and it was during this stopover that investigators suspected an explosive device had been placed on board.Shortly after the plane left Copenhagen, an explosion ripped through the aircraft at high altitude. The official accident report stated that the blast tore the DC-9 apart in midair, scattering wreckage across a remote, wooded area of Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic.All 27 other passengers and crew members died in the disaster. Vulovic was the sole survivor, a fact that turned an already tragic aviation accident into one of the most extraordinary survival stories ever recorded.Meet Vesna Vulovic, the only survivor after free-falling 33,333 feet after a plane crash (image- Guinness World Records official website )Why she survived the fallInvestigators believed that Vulovic was trapped by a food cart in the tail section of the aircraft as it plunged toward the ground. That section of the plane eventually landed in a heavily forested, snow-covered mountainside, and the terrain is thought to have softened the impact enough to give her a chance of survival.The snow, trees and angled slope may have acted as a crude but vital cushion. Rather than striking a flat, hard surface, the tail section appears to have come down through terrain that absorbed some of the force of the impact.It is important to understand that surviving such a fall was not simply a matter of luck. The position of the wreckage, the freezing conditions, the way the aircraft broke apart and the immediate rescue all played a role. Even so, the outcome remains exceptionally rare, which is why Guinness World Records continues to recognise it as the highest fall survived without a parachute.Found alive in the wreckageVulovic was discovered by Bruno Honke, a local woodsman who heard her screaming in the darkness while debris continued to fall around him. He found her alive in the wreckage and she was rushed to hospital for emergency treatment.Her injuries were catastrophic. She had suffered a fractured skull, two crushed vertebrae, a broken pelvis, several broken ribs and fractures in both legs. After arriving at hospital, she fell into a coma, and accounts differ on how long it lasted, with Guinness World Records reporting 27 days and the BBC reporting 10 days.For a time, she was temporarily paralysed from the waist down. Doctors were uncertain whether she would walk again, let alone return to any form of normal life.A long and painful recoveryVulovic spent 16 months in hospital after the crash, undergoing extensive treatment and rehabilitation. Her body had been shattered by the impact, and the road back was long, painful and uncertain.Against the odds, she made a near-full recovery. Although she did not return to flying, she eventually went back to work for the airline in a desk-based role.She later described the experience in simple, striking terms. “I was broken, and the doctors put me back together again,” she told The New York Times in 2008. “Nobody ever expected me to live this long.”A record that still standsIn 1985, Vulovic entered the Guinness Book of Records for surviving the highest fall without a parachute. Guinness World Records officially lists the record as 10,160 metres, set on 26 January 1972 over Srbska Kamenice in what was then Czechoslovakia.The record has never been broken. While other people have survived falls from extreme heights, none has been documented as surviving a fall from a greater altitude without a parachute.There has been some debate over the exact altitude at which the aircraft broke apart. In 2009, a journalistic investigation suggested that the plane may have begun an emergency descent before disintegrating, meaning the actual fall distance could have been lower than the official figure. However, even one of the journalists involved acknowledged that the evidence was circumstantial.The mystery of the bombingThe suspected bombing was never fully solved. Investigators believed that a device may have been planted on the aircraft during its stopover in Copenhagen, but no one was ever arrested and no conclusive proof was ever established.The lack of certainty has followed the story for decades. What is known is that the aircraft broke apart in flight, that 27 people died and that Vulovic alone survived. The question of who was responsible, and why, remains unanswered.Life after the crashVulovic became a national figure in Serbia, where her survival story earned her a level of fame few ordinary citizens ever experience. She used that visibility to speak on political issues and became known for her opposition to nationalism.She was dismissed from her airline job in 1990 after taking part in protests against President Slobodan Milosevic. Even after leaving the airline, she continued to speak out on political matters for another two decades.Despite everything she had been through, Vulovic continued to fly as a passenger. She once said that people often wanted to sit next to her on planes, perhaps drawn by the extraordinary story behind her survival.A survivor unlike any otherVesna Vulovic died in December 2016 at the age of 66. Her death was reported by Serbian state television, though the cause was not immediately known at the time.Her story endures because it sits at the edge of what seems possible. A young flight attendant, caught in an explosion at cruising altitude, fell from more than 10,000 metres and lived. The record she holds is not just a statistic. It is a reminder of how fragile life can be, and how occasionally, against every expectation, it survives.