There have been some incredible instances of people falling out of airplanes without parachutes and surviving. Take the story of Alan Magee, an American airman who survived a 22,000-foot fall from a damaged B-17 bomber over France in 1943. Thrown clear of the aircraft and rendered unconcious, he fell four miles before crashing through the glass roof of St. Nazaire train station, shattering it and miraculously surviving, though with severe injuries.
The all-time record for surviving the highest fall without a parachute belongs to Yugoslavian flight attendant Vesna Vulović. She was the sole survivior of a bomb placed onboard JAT Flight 367 in 1972 which saw her plummet more than 30,000 feet. Experts believe she survived by being trapped by a food cart inside a section of the aircraft's fuselage which subsequently landed at an angle on a heavily wooded and snowy mountainside in Czechoslovakia.
Soviet Air Force lieutenant Ivan Chisov and Royal Air Force sergeant Nicholas Alkemade also survived in similar circumstances, thrown clear of bombers in the Second World War before landing in a mixture of snow and trees. Remarkably, Alkemade only suffered a sprained leg after falling 18,000 feet. The following infographic provides a list of known occasions where people survived extremely high falls without a parachute.
