The Woman Who Fell 6 Miles and Lived

On January 26, 1972, JAT Yugoslav Airlines Flight 367 was cruising over Czechoslovakia when a bomb hidden in the luggage compartment detonated. The Douglas DC-9 broke apart at 33,330 feet. All 28 people on board died—except one.

Vesna Vulović, a 22-year-old flight attendant, wasn't even supposed to be on that flight. She'd been mixed up with another attendant named Vesna and assigned to the wrong roster. That bureaucratic error would make her famous.

The Impossible Survival

Vulović plummeted over six miles while trapped in a section of the fuselage. She crashed into a snow-covered mountainside in a village called Srbská Kamenice. A local villager, Bruno Honke—a former medic in World War II—found her in the wreckage and kept her alive until help arrived.

Her injuries were catastrophic:

• Fractured skull
• Two broken legs
• Three broken vertebrae
• Temporary paralysis from the waist down

She spent 27 days in a coma and months in the hospital. Doctors didn't expect her to walk again. She proved them wrong.

Why Did She Survive?

Several factors likely contributed to her miraculous survival. The section of fuselage she was trapped in may have acted like a crude protective shell, spinning as it fell and slowing her descent slightly. The deep snow on the mountainside cushioned the impact. Her low blood pressure—a condition she'd always had—may have prevented her heart from bursting on impact.

She also had no memory of the explosion or the fall. Her last memory was greeting passengers as they boarded in Copenhagen. The amnesia, doctors suggested, might have been a blessing—her body remained limp and relaxed during the descent rather than tensing up.

Life After the Fall

Vulović made a remarkable recovery. Within 16 months, she was back at work for JAT—though understandably, she took a desk job rather than returning to the skies. She became a minor celebrity in Yugoslavia and eventually a national hero in Serbia.

The Guinness World Records officially recognized her fall as the highest survived without a parachute. She held this record until her death on December 23, 2016, at age 66—and technically still holds it, since no one has survived a higher fall since.

When asked about her feelings on flying after the incident, Vulović was characteristically matter-of-fact. She wasn't afraid. "I'm not lucky," she once said. "Everybody thinks I'm lucky, but they're wrong. If I were lucky, I would never have been on that plane."

The Lingering Mystery

In 2009, investigative journalists raised questions about the official account, suggesting the plane might have been flying much lower when it was shot down by Czechoslovak air force fighters—and that the Yugoslav government covered this up. The full truth may never be known.

What remains certain: Vesna Vulović fell from the sky, hit a mountain, and lived to tell about it. Even if the exact altitude is debated, her survival remains one of the most extraordinary in aviation history.