Vesna Vulović

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Vesna Vulović ( Serbian - Cyrillic Весна Вуловић ; born January 3, 1950 in Belgrade ; found dead on December 23, 2016 there ) was a Yugoslav flight attendant who, according to the Czechoslovak State Security, survived a fall from a height of 10,160 meters on January 26, 1972 . This event is recorded as the highest fall without a parachute in the Guinness Book of Records , but has now been questioned by the latter itself.

Flight JU 367

Vesna Vulović was a flight attendant with the Yugoslav airline JAT . On January 26, 1972 she was to fly on board a Douglas DC-9 ( flight JU 367 ) from Stockholm via Copenhagen to Zagreb and Belgrade . However, the plane crashed over the Czechoslovak village of Srbská Kamenice , near the border with the GDR . The Yugoslav authorities accused Croatian extremists of causing the plane to crash with a bomb smuggled on board.

The 22-year-old flight attendant Vesna Vulović was the only one of 5 crew members and 23 passengers to survive . After a 27-day coma and 16 months of rehabilitation , she continued her work with the JAT ground staff.

Her survival was explained in media reports with the fact that Vulović was in the rear of the machine at the time of the detonation. The tail section, which was torn off as a result of the explosion, fell in a spiral trajectory towards the ground and fell onto a snow-covered slope and was thus slowed down. According to her own statements, the young flight attendant was sitting in the middle of the plane, which was only occupied by a few passengers - in the row behind the last passenger, as stipulated by the JAT airline regulations. Their chances of survival after the transfusion of four liters of blood were assessed by the doctor responsible as extremely low. According to her statements, she herself could not remember the crash because she suffered from memory loss.

Vesna Vulović was included in the Guinness Book of Records in the 1970s. The Guinness Book of Records relied on the claims originally made by the Czechoslovak State Security and adopted in the official accident report sent to the ICAO , according to which the aircraft had broken apart at a height of a good 10 kilometers.

According to research by the ARD radio studio in Prague, Vesna Vulović's plane crashed from a low altitude, which explains her survival more plausibly. The ARD report is based on the evaluation of secret files released by the Czechoslovak State Security in the 1990s and on statements from eyewitnesses to the crash. According to the Serbian media, Vesna Vulović herself said she was against the ARD report.

A spokesman for the Guinness Book of Records commented on the new findings on January 9, 2009 and admitted a possible "hoax" to which the Guinness Book of Records has succumbed.

In the 1990s Vesna Vulović appeared as an activist against the regime of Slobodan Milošević . She was a member of the DS . Vesna Vulović last lived as an early retiree in Belgrade and suffered severely from the consequences of the crash until her death at the age of 66.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Serbian stewardess who survived jet crash in 1972 dies at 66. In: foxnews.com, December 24, 2016.
  2. ^ Highest fall survived without parachute. Retrieved July 8, 2019.
  3. ↑ a b Janusz Biene: Conspiracy uncovered: secret service invented bomb attack. In: the daily newspaper . January 9, 2009, accessed April 9, 2019 .
  4. ^ Accident details. In: planecrashinfo.com, accessed July 8, 2019.
  5. ↑ Gerald Schubert: Vesna Vulović's record fall. An invented miracle? , radio.cz, January 24, 2009, accessed April 22, 2012.
  6. ↑ Enver Robelli: Fall and Rise of Vesna Vulovic. Süddeutsche Zeitung , May 9, 2008, accessed on August 23, 2009 .
personal data
SURNAME Vulović, Vesna
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Yugoslav flight attendant
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Belgrade
DATE OF DEATH before December 23, 2016
Place of death Belgrade