If there is life after death, then Vesna Vulovic may have experienced it. The only problem is she would never be able to remember what it was like. One moment she was flying 33,300 feet above east-central Europe, the next she was lying totally unconscious in the woods of Czechoslovakia. She never remembered the plane being blown apart, her fall or subsequent rescue. That was probably for the best. When Vesna awoke from a coma two weeks after the crash her body was ravaged. Both of her legs had been broken along with three vertebrae, multiple ribs and a fractured pelvis. Speaking of fractures, her skull had suffered a nearly fatal blow that led to hemorrhaging. She was also temporarily paralyzed from the waist down.

Oddly enough, even after she regained consciousness in a Prague hospital, Vesna was unable to recall those next two weeks for the rest of her life. A month’s worth of traumatic memories was lost to her. Despite all the injuries Vesna was somehow still alive, even if she could not remember what had happened to her. A doctor showed her a newspaper reporting on the plane crash and Vesna’s survival. She then proceeded to faint. Vesna was just as astounded as the rest of the world by her survival. She was a miracle, albeit a badly broken and battered one, but a miracle all the same. She had almost died, for all intents and purposes did die, at least consciously. And now she was coming back to life.

The Fateful Flight – Representation of JAT Flight 367 (Credit: Anynobody)

Distant Memories – Departures & Arrivals
One might think that the last thing Vesna Vulovic wanted to do after she regained consciousness was to take a flight back home, but that is exactly what she did. Her doctors decided that it was safe to transport her back to Belgrade. Sedation was suggested as a treatment to help her overcome the psychological trauma of flying again. Vesna insisted that she would be just fine. It was not courage, but loss of memory that made flying again of little concern to her. How could she be traumatized by an incident that she could not remember. Her final memory on the day of the crash was boarding the plane. There was also that hazy memory of the irritated passenger who she and her fellow crewmembers had noticed disembarking from the plane after its flight from Stockholm landed in Copenhagen. Could that man have had something to do with the crash? He was as distant to her as the memory of that fateful day.

There were other clues that something had been amiss with JAT Flight 367. A Croatian nationalist group had phoned a Stockholm newspaper to take credit for causing the crash. That same day, six people on a train traveling from Vienna to Zagreb were killed when a bomb that had been placed onboard. The Czechoslovakian Aviation Authority’s investigators would later attribute the crash to a briefcase bomb. Unlike most plane crashes, the focus was less on what had caused it or the passenger who had died. Instead, all anyone could remember was one extremely lucky survivor, Vesna Vulovic. Her survival was remarkable because much of it had to do with a lifelong health issue. Vesna suffered from low blood pressure.

When Vesna had first pursued a job with JAT as a flight stewardess, low blood pressure threatened to ground her career. In order not to fail a medical examination for the position, she drank profuse amounts of coffee before her blood pressure was checked. With caffeine coursing through her veins, she passed the test and soon took to the skies. Ironically, low blood pressure would also save her life. When the plane broke apart and went into free fall, Vesna’s health condition caused her to lose consciousness. When the cabin suddenly depressurized, her blood pressure problems meant her heart would not burst on impact. Vesna’s health issue had helped save her life.

Fallout – JAT Flight 367 after the crash

Internal Damages – A Broken Home
Vesna might have survived the crash, but she was in dire physical condition. Repairing her battered and broken body required many surgeries, along with months of grueling rehab. Astonishingly, she was walking again after just ten months. Such an incredible turn in her personal fortunes also came at great cost to her family’s financial and mental health. Her parents were forced to sell both of their automobiles to help pay for the surgeries. That may not sound like much, but in Yugoslavia cars were highly prized possessions. As their finances deteriorated so did their health. The worry and stress caused by the accident took a heavy toll on both her mother and father. Each of them would die young. In an interview she gave many years later, Vesna said she believed the plane crash had ruined her parent’s life. The same held true for many aspects of her own life.

JAT allowed Vesna to go back to work for them, but not as a flight stewardess. Through no fault of her own she was literally an accidental celebrity. The airline believed that her presence as a stewardess would distract from the flights. It could lead to even more attention focused on the crash of Flight 367 which had been most likely caused by Croatian nationalists. This was something the Yugoslav government did not want the public to be reminded about. JAT decided to give Vesna a desk job instead. The life Vesna had longed for, one of flying to and from the great cities of Europe was no longer a viable option. She may not have died on the flight, but her dream of flying abroad certainly did.

An Incomplete Recovery – Vesna Vulovic in the hospital

Life’s Disappointments – A Sense Of Alienation
Vesna’s private life was not what she had planned for herself either. She got married and was later pregnant. Sadly, both ended in failure. Physically she still showed signs of her injuries, walking the rest of her life with a noticeable limp. Psychologically, she suffered from survivor’s guilt. And it was easy to see why. Everyone else on Flight 367 had perished. There was no one left who could really understand what she had experienced or the way she felt. The parents who had sacrificed almost everything to shepherd her back to health were gone as well. Vesna’s life may have been a one in a billion story of survival, the problem was that this also created a sense of alienation and loneliness. Her story was uplifting, a triumph of destiny over despair, hope over adversity. Everything that came after her remarkable survival was something of a disappointment. Life beyond death was an impossible concept to grasp. Perhaps Vesna’s most remarkable life achievement was that she never gave up. She always found something worth fighting for. This would include the cause of democracy in the 1990’s after Yugoslavia collapsed.

Click here for: The Right & Wrong Sides Of History – Vesna Vulovic: The Soul Of A Survivor (Part Three)