Flight attendant Vesna Vulovic was trapped by her food trolley at the tail end of Yugoslav Airlines Douglas DC-9 as it hurtled 33,000ft down to earth.
A bomb had blown a hole in the jet as it passed over Czechoslovakia late on January 26, 1972, filling the cabin with thin, freezing air.
Apart from Ms Vulovic, all other passengers and crew on board died as the plane crashed down into a heavily wooded patch of the snow-capped mountainside.
Luck had saved Vesna Vulovic as the plane broke up around her during its descent. Her screams would save her again, as she was rescued by a nearby woodsman before falling into a coma for three days.
Ms Vulovic became a local celebrity after emerging relatively unscathed from the highest fall survived without a parachute.
