[quote] I'd imagine the only thing worse than dying in a plane crash is surviving one. How do you EVER move past trauma that all-encompassing?
Vesna Vulović (Serbian Cyrillic: Весна Вуловић, pronounced [ʋêsna ʋûːloʋitɕ]; 3 January 1950 – 23 December 2016) was a Serbian flight attendant who survived the highest fall without a parachute: 33,338 feet.
She was the sole survivor after an explosion tore through the baggage compartment of JAT Flight 367 on 26 January 1972, causing it to crash near Srbská Kamenice, Czechoslovakia (now part of the Czech Republic). Air safety investigators attributed the explosion to a briefcase bomb. The Yugoslav authorities suspected that émigré Croatian nationalists were to blame, but no one was ever arrested.
Following the bombing, Vulović spent days in a coma and was hospitalized for several months. She suffered a fractured skull, three broken vertebrae, broken legs, broken ribs, and a fractured pelvis. These injuries resulted in her being temporarily paralyzed from the waist down. Vulović made an almost complete recovery but continued to walk with a limp. She had little to no memory of the incident and had no qualms about flying in the aftermath of the crash.
Despite her willingness to resume work as a flight attendant, Jat Airways (JAT) gave her a desk job negotiating freight contracts, feeling her presence on flights would attract too much publicity. Vulović became a celebrity in Yugoslavia and was deemed a national hero.
Vulović told reporters that she did not think of her fall every day, but admitted to struggling with survivor's guilt. "Whenever I think of the accident, I have a prevailing, grave feeling of guilt for surviving it and I cry ... Then I think maybe I should not have survived at all." Vulović declined therapy to help cope with her experiences and instead turned to religion, becoming a devout Orthodox Christian. She stated that her ordeal had turned her into an optimist. "If you can survive what I survived," she said, "you can survive anything."
In the last years of her life, Vulović lived on a pension of €300 per month in her Belgrade apartment. "I don't know what to say when people say I was lucky," she remarked. "Life is so hard today."
Vulović lamented that her mother and father might not have died prematurely had she not been aboard Flight 367, stating that the incident not only ruined her life but also those of her parents. She only occasionally granted interviews and declined numerous requests, most notably from Oprah Winfrey and the BBC, saying that she was "tired" of discussing her fall.
By the time she had reached her sixties, Vulović's deteriorating health prevented her from taking part in annual commemorations at Srbská Kamenice, which she had previously attended for many years.
In December 2016, Vulović's friends became concerned for her well-being after she abruptly stopped answering telephone calls. On 23 December, locksmiths discovered her body in her apartment after forcing open the door. Vulović's friends said that she had struggled with heart ailments in the years leading up to her death.
