The explosion tore through the fuselage of the narrow-body jetliner, breaking it apart into three pieces.
The wreckage then crashed near the village of Srbska Kamenice in Czechoslovakia.
But Vulovic was not supposed to be on the doomed flight.
The route of flight JAT367.
Image:Karel x/Wikimedia
A villager named Bruno Honke discovered Vulovic when he heard her screaming amid the wreckage.
Honke had been a medic during World War II and was able to keep Vulovic alive until rescuers arrived.
Her pelvis was fractured and several ribs were also broken.
Her injuries resulted in her being temporarily paralyzed below the waist, and she spent several days in coma.
The last thing she remembered was greeting passengers as they boarded.
The next thing she remembered was seeing her parents in her hospital room about one month later.
Back home, Vulovic became a national celebrity and received a decoration from Yugoslav President Josip Tito.
The Serbian folk singer Miroslav Ilic even wrote a song in her honor.
For decades after the crash, Vulovic struggled with survivors guilt.
She stated that her ordeal had turned her into an optimist.
Monument to victims of the Yugoslav aircraft tragedy of 1972, in Srbska Kamenice.
I’m not lucky.
Everybody thinks I am lucky, but they a mistaken.
If I were lucky I would never had this accident and my mother and father would be alive.
The accident ruined their lives too.
She avoided arrest because the government was concerned about the negative publicity that her imprisonment would bring.
Vesna Vulovic died in 2016 at the age of 66.
