An Air Stewardess Fell 33,000 Feet And Lived To Tell The Tale 50 Years Ago Today
The story of Vesna Vulovic’s survival after a DC-9 airliner exploded in mid-air is a miraculous one.
BY THOMAS NEWDICK JANUARY 26, 2022
CLIPPERARCTIC-DC9 VIA WIKIPEDIA. OTHER-PUBLIC DOMAIN
THOMAS NEWDICK View Thomas Newdick’s Articles
Fifty years ago today, air stewardess Vesna Vulovic plunged more than 33,000 feet from an exploding airliner, landing in a Czechoslovak mountain range, and surviving. Subsequently, it was determined that Vulovic’s fall was the highest that a human has ever sustained without a parachute. But with all 27 other passengers and crew aboard the JAT Yugoslav Airlines Douglas DC-9 being killed, Vulovic’s story was not an altogether happy one.
On January 26, 1972, Vulovic was working aboard DC-9-32 YU-AHT, flying between Stockholm and Belgrade as JAT Yugoslav Airlines Flight 367, with scheduled stopovers in Copenhagen and Zagreb. Remarkably, it seems Vulovic shouldn’t even have been on the flight in the first place, with reports that she had been assigned to the five-person crew that day due to a mix-up with another flight attendant with a similar name.
NICKELL61/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
A rare color shot of YU-AHT, the DC9-32 lost on January 26, 1972.
Departing Copenhagen in the afternoon, the DC-9 was flying on a busy route. After checking out with the East German air traffic controllers on the border with Czechoslovakia, it should have been handed over to their Czech counterparts. They tried to contact the airliner but got no response. Alerted to the situation, the East Germans continued to track the plane after it crossed into Czechoslovak airspace before the radar contact suddenly became more prominent and then disappeared.
A suspected bomb had detonated aboard Flight 367. The airliner broke into three sections which came down around the village of Srbská Kamenice close to the East German border, in what is now the Czech Republic.
Incredibly, Vulovic was found alive, trapped by a food cart in either the center section or the tail section of the jet, depending on sources. According to the official accident report, she had fallen 33,330 feet — or 6.31 miles — to the ground.
The tail section had come down in a densely forested area, which was also covered in snow, further cushioning the impact. Although Vulovic sustained a fractured skull, two crushed vertebrae, a broken pelvis, two broken legs, and several broken ribs, she was still conscious and her cries for help had been heard in the dark by a woodsman who was among the rescue team.
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An Air Stewardess Fell 33,000 Feet And Lived To Tell The Tale 50 Years Ago Today (thedrive.com)