She Fell 10,000 Feet Out Of A Plane And Lived To Tell The Tale
When LANSA Flight 508 was struck by lightning on Christmas Eve in 1971, a 17-year-old girl named Juliane Koepcke plummeted 10,000 feet from the sky and landed in the Amazon rainforest.
Somehow, she lived to tell the tale. She wandered the jungle for 11 days before coming across some loggers who helped her. Here is the story of her remarkable strength and survival.
Koepcke was born in 1954 to two German zoologists who had moved to Peru to study the wildlife there.
Her father was part of an effort to urge the government to preserve the Amazon rainforest. As a result, Koepcke was raised in the jungle. Growing up in such a dangerous environment helped her learn survival skills.
On Christmas Eve, she had been traveling from Lima, Peru, with her mother to Pucallpa to visit her father, who was working in the Amazon rainforest.
The day before that fateful flight, Koepcke had just received her high school diploma. She planned to study zoology just like her parents.
The flight was only supposed to be an hour long. But then, a huge thunderstorm rolled in 25 minutes into the ride.
The aircraft’s motor was struck by lightning and careened downward toward the jungle below. The plane disintegrated into pieces as it fell.
Koepcke was still strapped to her seat when she was launched from the plane and fell 10,000 feet. She lost consciousness, and when she woke up, she found herself in the middle of the rainforest. Miraculously, she only had a few minor injuries.
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It took half a day for her to be able to get up and move around. She suffered from a concussion, a broken collarbone, and a deep gash on her calf.
She also couldn’t see very well out of one eye. She was aware that she had just survived a plane crash, though. When she finally got moving, she tried to search for her mother but was unsuccessful.
Along the way, she discovered a small well and followed the water downstream, which would lead her to civilization, according to her father.
On the fourth day, she came across three passengers who had landed headfirst into the ground. None of them were her mother.
One of the passengers had a bag of sweets, which she took. It served as her only source of sustenance for the remainder of her days in the forest.
Around that time, she saw rescue aircraft through the canopy of the trees but was unable to catch their attention.
On the ninth day, she encountered a hut and decided to stop for a rest. Then, she heard the voices of three Peruvian loggers who lived in the hut.
At first, her appearance frightened them, as they thought she could be a water spirit. Still, the next day, they took her to a local hospital.
After she was treated for her injuries, she was reunited with her father. She learned that her mother had survived the fall as well but died shortly after due to her injuries. Koepcke helped authorities locate the wreckage of the plane. There had been 92 people on board, and she was the only survivor.
Following the crash, Koepcke developed an intense fear of flying and suffered from nightmares. For a while, she was the center of media attention.
In 1980, she enrolled in the University of Kiel in Germany to study biology. She later received her doctorate degree, returned to Peru to do research, and got married. In 1998, she returned to the crash site to film a documentary about her amazing story of survival. The experience gave her a sense of closure and inspired her to write a memoir.
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