Wednesday, January 26, 1972. Yugoslav Air Transport (JAT) planes landed at Copenhagen Airport from Stockholm. There was a change of crew in Copenhagen for the next flight, the destination is Zagreb. There was a "mistake", the one to call it administrative, which happens every day in ordinary life, the change of name. Vesna replaced Vesna. Twenty-two-year-old Vesna Vulović, a flight attendant with eight months of experience, was told that she should fly instead of her colleague of the same name.
That "mistake" changed her life by 180 degrees (and fortunately, it didn't end it). That fateful 1972 on the flight Copenhagen - Zagreb, no passenger was left alive, but as they later called her, the happiest woman, Vesna Vulović survived the fall from 10,000 meters.
Vesna Vulović survived because she was tied to her seat in the back part (tail) of the plane, which, after the explosion, remained connected to the toilets and fell on the mountain. Among the injuries she sustained were a skull fracture, both broken legs and three broken vertebrae, one of which was crushed, leaving her temporarily paralyzed from the waist down. She walked after a few months, after several consecutive surgeries.
Vesna Vulović received the title for the Guinness World Record from Paul McCartney. She later became a national hero in Yugoslavia during the 1970s.
Our superhero, Vesna Vulović (66), passed away in December 2016, in a small apartment of about thirty square meters, which she received from JAT, and where she modestly spent the rest of her life after retiring in the early 1990s. Every January, she celebrated her birthday twice: on January 3 and the other, by chance, on January 26, because she believed that Saint Sava had saved her.
It's wonderful that you reminded me of Vesna Vulović. She really was for the Guinness Book, but it is very sad that she died forgotten. I watched her confession. She lived very hard.