Vesna Vulović (Serbian Cyrillic: Весна Вуловић; 1950 – 23 December 2016) was a Serbian flight attendant. She holds the distinction of being the world record holder, according to the Guinness Book of Records, for surviving the highest fall without a parachute: 10,160 metres (33,333 ft). She was the sole survivor of the JAT Flight 367 that crashed near Srbská Kamenice, Czechoslovakia on 26 January 1972.

Plane explosion

On 26 January 1972, an explosion on JAT Flight 367, while over Srbská Kamenice in Czechoslovakia (now in the Czech Republic) caused the plane to break apart. Vulović, 22 years old at the time, was a flight attendant on board. She was not scheduled to be on that flight; she had been mixed up with another flight attendant who was also named Vesna.

The official report of the Czechoslovak investigation commission, which was handed over to the ICAO on 7 May 1974, stated that there had been an explosion in the front baggage compartment of the plane. The Czechoslovak secret service (Státní bezpečnost), which was leading the investigation, presented parts of an alarm clock ten days after the crash which they claimed came from a bomb. The report concluded that the explosion was the result of a bomb.

On the morning of 27 January 1972, an anonymous man called the newspaper Kvällsposten published in Malmö, Sweden, claiming, in broken Swedish, that he was a Croat and member of a nationalist group that placed the bomb on the plane. Apart from this, no further evidence was ever found that established that the bombing was a terrorist attack. Nevertheless, shortly after the phone call, the Yugoslav government blamed the Ustaše. According to the official report the explosion tore the McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 to pieces in mid-air, and Vulović was the only survivor. It has since been stated that she survived because she had been in the rear part of the plane. However, both Vulović and Bruno Henke, the man who rescued her from the wrecked fuselage on the ground, state that she was found in the middle section right above the wings.

Vulović fell approximately 10,160 meters (33,333 ft). She suffered a fractured skull, three broken vertebrae (one crushed completely) that left her temporarily paralyzed from the waist down, and both legs broken. She was in a coma for 27 days. In an interview, she commented that according to the man who found her, "...I was in the middle part of the plane. I was found with my head down and my colleague on top of me. One part of my body with my leg was in the plane and my head was out of the plane. A catering trolley was pinned against my spine and kept me in the plane. The man who found me says I was very lucky. He was in the German Army as a medic during World War II. He knew how to treat me at the site of the accident."

Aftermath

Vulović continued working for Jat Airways at a desk job following a full recovery from her injuries. She regained the use of her legs and continued to fly sporadically. She claims she has no fear of flying, which she attributes to the loss of memory of the crash, and she even enjoys watching movies with plane crashes. She was considered a national heroine throughout the former Yugoslavia.

Vulović was awarded the Guinness Record title by Paul McCartney at a ceremony in 1985.

Vulović was eventually dismissed in 1990 for expressing views critical of Yugoslav ruler Slobodan Milošević. She participated in protests against his rule afterwards, up to and including the Bulldozer Revolution that led to his ousting. Many believe that her status as a national heroine prevented the authorities from arresting her despite her open defiance of the Milošević government. She continued to be vocal in politics in Serbia after 2000.

Controversy

In January 2009 German ARD radio correspondent Peter Hornung-Andersen together with Dutch and Czech journalists published a theory that the plane had been shot down by mistake by the Czechoslovak Air Force only a few hundred metres above the ground, not the 10,000 metres claimed by the official investigation. All the evidence suggesting the explosion at high altitude would have been forged by Czechoslovak secret police.

Vesna Vulović referred to the claims that the plane attempted a forced landing or descended to such low altitude as a "nebulous nonsense". A representative of Guinness World Records stated that "it seems that at the time Guinness was duped by this swindle just like the rest of the media."

The Czech Civilian Aviation Authority dismissed the conspiracy theory, stating that the findings of the official investigation are being questioned mostly because of media interest in the theory. Hornung-Andersen himself stated that his theory is based on "circumstantial evidence, not proof".

Death

Vulović died in her apartment in Belgrade on 23 December 2016. She was found dead by her friends, the cause of the death was not immediately known.