Flight attendant survives 10,160-metre fall after plane bombing, setting world record in 1972

On 26 January 1972, a Yugoslav Airlines flight broke apart in the sky above Czechoslovakia after an explosion tore through the aircraft. Among the 28 people on board, only one person lived: 23-year-old flight attendant Vesna Vulovic.

According to Guinness World Records, she fell from an altitude of 10,160 metres, or 33,333 feet, and survived without a parachute, a feat that still stands as the record for the highest fall survived.The story sounds almost impossible, yet it is documented in official accident records, contemporary reporting and later accounts of her life. Vulovic was found amid wreckage on a snow-covered mountainside near Srbska Kamenice, injured so severely that doctors did not expect her to live.

She spent years recovering, but eventually returned to work and became one of the most remarkable survivors in aviation history.A routine flight becomes a disasterVulovic was working as a Jugoslavenski Aerotransport hostess aboard a Douglas DC-9 flying from Stockholm to Belgrade.