The mystery of Vesna Vulovic, the hostess that was the only survivor of a flight that exploded 10 kilometers high

On January 26, 1972, Flight 367 of the Yugoslava Jat airline took Stockholm, Sweden, destined for Belgrade, Yugoslavia, after a scale in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Among the crew was Vesna Vulovic, a young hostess who, at that time, was 22 years old and prepared to serve the passenger dinner when an explosion in the cargo cellar unleashed a tragedy in the air.

The plane, a DC-9, rushed from an altitude of 10,160 meters and crashed into a wooded area of ​​the current Czech Republic. LCatastrophe claimed the life of the 23 passengers and four of the five crew members. However, against all logic, Vesna was found alive among the remains of the fuselage, starting an enigma that continues without a definitive response.

An error that brought it to the wrong flight

The most ironic thing is that the young woman should not be on that flight. An error in the assignment of crews caused her to be selected instead of another hostess with the same name. That mistake led her to be aboard a plane sentenced to the tragedy.

Despite the seriousness of the accident, Vesna survived and in 1985 he received recognition from the Guinness book of records as the person who fell from the highest height without parachute and lived to tell.

An explosion and a deadly fall

The accident investigation pointed to a suitcase with explosives that would have been placed in the loading winery of the plane, either in Stockholm or on the Copenhagen scale. Among the remains of DC-9, experts found the closure of a suitcase that could have contained the pump.

The explosion did not disintegrate the plane completely, but fatally damaged its structure. Sudden decompression, low temperatures and violent fall made survival for the rest of the occupants of the aircraft impossible.

How did you survive Vesna Vulovic?

When the aircraft disappeared from the radars, the last registered signal occurred at 4:01 a.m. while Hermsdorf, in Germany, before entering Czechoslovak airspace. Minutes later, the plane hit a snowy area near the town of Ceska Kamenice.

Vesna’s body was found among the remains of the rear of the fuselage. It had a skull fracture with cerebral hemorrhage, three broken vertebrae and multiple leg fractures. However, I was alive.

The experts who tried to rebuild their fall suggested that the young woman was thrown at the bottom of the back of the plane by the explosion, where a service cart fell on her, avoiding that it was suckled by decompression.

Then, the aircraft’s tail hit the mountain hillside at an angle that damping the fall, sliding down the snow and reducing the impact.

Another testimony about your salvation

Bruno Henke, a ranger who was in the area at the time of the accident, was the one who found Vesna alive. His story contradicts the official version, since he assured that the young woman was in the middle of the plane, near the wings, and not in the tail.

Henke said he managed to locate her thanks to her shouts of pain. He found her face down, with the body of a partner on top and her legs trapped inside the fuselage. His experience as a doctor during World War II allowed him to give him first aid and keep it alive until medical assistance came.

Vesna never recovered the memory of the accident, so he ended up believing in the ranger version. Over time, Henke baptized his daughter with the name of Vesna in honor of the flight attendant who rescued from the rubble.

A long recovery process

Surviving the fall did not mean that the danger had passed. His state of health was critical and was immediately transferred to a local hospital, and then be referred to Prague. For weeks he was in an induced coma, subject to multiple surgeries and with few moments of consciousness.

One of the first memories of his recovery was when he saw his mother, who traveled from Belgrade to accompany her. On another occasion, when he woke up, he asked one of the doctors, who denied his request.

After two weeks of hospitalization, they read the news of the accident. Knowing what happened was devastating. “I almost kills me,” assured. The last thing he remembered of that day was to have helped passengers to address on the Copenhagen scale.

His rehabilitation was an arduous process. The fractures in its column temporarily left it paralyzed from the waist down and, for months, it was in doubt if it would walk again. After more than 10 months of treatment and several surgeries, he managed to recover mobility.

Fame, record and militancy

Become a renowned figure, Vesna Vulovic reached the status of national heroin in Yugoslavia. It was received with honors by the country’s leader, Marshal Josip Broz Tito, and his fame transcended the borders. In his region, songs were dedicated and became a recurring character in television programs.

The few times that he returned to work as a hostess, the passengers saw her as a symbol of good luck. Many wanted to stay close to it, convinced that their presence would protect them in case of an accident.

In 1981, her feat was recognized by the Guinness book of the records, which rewarded her for having survived the fall from a higher height without parachute. However, his most special moment came in 1985, when in an event in the Guinness Hall of Fame he met Paul McCartney. Vesna had become a hostess in the hope of visiting Great Britain frequently, since he was a fan of the Beatles, and his favorite was precisely the former band of the band.

At the end of the 80s, his life took an unexpected turn. He was fired from JAT after criticism against Serbia president, Slobodan Milošević. From then on, he became a political activist and fought against his regime to the fall of the president in October 2000.

Vesna gave importance to her feat and linked her to the resistance of her people.

In an interview with The New York Times in 2008, he declared: “We Serbs are survivors. We have survived communism, Tito, war, poverty, bombings, sanctions already Milošević. We simply want a normal life. I want a normal life. ”

On December 23, 2016, Vesna Vulovic was found dead in his department at age 66.