Air hostess who survived 33,000ft fall in 1972 has died aged 66

An air hostess who was the sole survivor of an alleged terror attack, in which a plane she was in blew up at 33,000ft (10,000m), has died aged 66.

Vesna Vulovic, of Serbia, holds the Guinness World Record for the highest fall survived without a parachute after the 1972 attack, which killed all other 27 people on board.

According to state television, Vulovic was found dead in her home on Friday (23 December), but the cause of her death was not immediately known.

She was aged 22 when Yugoslav Airlines flight DC-9 went down over the Czechoslovakian mountains on 26 January, 1972.

According to investigators, Vulovic was trapped by a food cart in the plane's tail section as it plummeted towards the ground.

She landed in a heavily wooded and snow-covered part of the mountain, which is believed to have broken her fall, before she heard screaming by a woodsman, who heard her screaming and came to her rescue, as debris from the plane rained down.

According to Guinness World Records, she was not even supposed to be on board the plane.

"Her schedule had been mixed up with that of another stewardess also named Vesna, and she was subsequently placed on the wrong flight," a spokesman for GWR said.

"But Vulvovic was happy for the mistake, as it afforded her the opportunity to see Denmark and to stay in a Sheraton Hotel, which she had always dreamed of doing. But the mix up was not so fortuitous as it seemed."

The terror group Ustashe is believed to have been responsible for the explosion, which caused Vulovic to plummet for at least three minutes.

She fractured her skull, spine, both legs and was temporarily paralysed from the waist down. When she awoke from her coma, according to GWR, the first thing she did was ask for a cigarette.

"I was broken, and the doctors put me back together again," she told the New York Times in 2008. "Nobody ever expected me to live this long."

Despite suffering short-term insomnia and having no memories of her fall whatsoever, Vulovic went on to make a full recovery and regained the ability to walk.