On January 26, 1972, a Yugoslav airliner exploded at cruising altitude over Czechoslovakia. Everyone aboard died — except one. Vesna Vulović, a 22-year-old flight attendant from Belgrade, fell roughly 33,000 feet still strapped to her seat and lived. No parachute. No pressurized cabin. Just a freefall from the edge of the sky to a snow-covered hillside. Her survival remains the most extraordinary in aviation history.
Vesna Vulović was born in Belgrade, Serbia, in 1950. She grew up with a strong desire to travel and see the world beyond Yugoslavia’s borders. Becoming a flight attendant with JAT — the national airline of Yugoslavia — gave her exactly that. The job meant international routes, new cities, and a life far more adventurous than most young women in her country experienced at the time.
Vulović was not originally scheduled to work Flight 367 on January 26, 1972. She ended up on the crew because of a scheduling mix-up — another flight attendant shared her first name, and the assignment landed on Vulović by mistake. The crew flew into Copenhagen the day before departure and spent the layover shopping and resting. By most accounts, the mood among the crew that day was unusually quiet and somber, a detail that those who survived the layover would later recall with unease. Flight 367 departed from Stockholm and made a stop in Copenhagen before continuing toward Belgrade. While the aircraft was on the ground in Copenhagen, Vulović noticed a specific passenger who stood out to her. He disembarked and did not reboard. She later described him as visibly agitated and irritable. His behavior would weigh on her memory for the rest of her life. At 3:15 p.m., the flight left Copenhagen. Forty-six minutes into the flight, at 33,000 feet, a bomb hidden inside a briefcase in the baggage compartment detonated. The aircraft broke apart almost instantly.
The wreckage scattered over the village of Srbská Kamenice in what was then Czechoslovakia. Vulović, still buckled into her flight attendant jump seat, plummeted the full height of the aircraft’s cruising altitude to the ground below. A local man named Bruno Honke found her in the wreckage. Honke was a former medic, and that fact alone kept her alive in those first critical minutes. He administered first aid and stayed with her until emergency responders arrived.
Vulović’s injuries were catastrophic. She had a fractured skull, three broken vertebrae, broken legs, and multiple fractures in her pelvis. She was in a coma for 27 days. When she came out of it, she was temporarily paralyzed from the waist down. Against every medical expectation, she made a full recovery after a long period of hospitalization and rehabilitation. She later said she had no memory of the crash itself or the moments before it.
Investigators concluded that the explosion was caused by a briefcase bomb placed in the cargo hold. Yugoslav authorities pointed to Croatian nationalist extremists as the likely perpetrators. No one was ever officially charged or arrested for the attack. The bombing occurred during a deeply unstable period in Yugoslav politics, when ethnic and political tensions were frequently producing violent acts both inside and outside the country’s borders.
After her recovery, Vulović became a national hero in Yugoslavia. She received the Guinness World Record for surviving the highest fall without a parachute — a record she held for decades. Her fame extended well beyond Yugoslavia’s borders, and she was recognized internationally as a symbol of improbable survival. She continued working for JAT for years after the crash, though not in a flying capacity.
Vulović’s life took a sharp political turn in the early 1990s during the breakup of Yugoslavia. She openly participated in anti-government protests against the authoritarian regime of Slobodan Milošević. JAT dismissed her from her position because of her activism. Despite her status as a beloved national figure, her outspoken stance cost her the job she had held for years. The government chose not to arrest her, almost certainly aware of the backlash that would follow if they moved against someone with her level of public recognition. Her political involvement only deepened after her dismissal. During the Bulldozer Revolution of October 2000 — the popular uprising that ended Milošević’s grip on power — Vulović was an active participant. After the regime fell, she aligned with the Democratic Party and campaigned for Serbia’s integration into the European Union, supporting the country’s move toward democratic governance and closer ties with Western Europe. Her final years were difficult. Vulović lived quietly in her Belgrade apartment, largely withdrawn from public life. She struggled with survivor’s guilt, a condition that never fully left her in the decades after the crash. Financially, she lived on a modest pension, a stark contrast to the global recognition her story had earned. Vesna Vulović died in December 2016 at the age of 66.
