Juliane Koepcke: The Girl Who Fell From the Sky and Survived

Juliane Koepcke is a German-Peruvian biologist who has a remarkable story of survival. On Christmas Eve 1971, she was flying with her mother over the Peruvian rainforest when their plane was hit by lightning and disintegrated in mid-air. She was the only one of the 92 passengers and crew who survived the crash. She fell nearly two miles to the ground, still strapped to her seat, and landed in the dense jungle. She then had to endure 11 days of wandering alone in the wilderness, facing hunger, thirst, injuries, insects and predators, before she was rescued by local fishermen.

A Turbulent Flight

Juliane Koepcke was born in Lima, Peru, in 1954, to German zoologists Maria and Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke. Her parents were working at Lima's Museum of Natural History when she was born. At the age of 14, she moved with her parents to Panguana, a biological research station they founded in the Amazon rainforest. There, she learned a lot about life in the jungle and its flora and fauna.

In 1971, Juliane and her mother decided to spend Christmas with her father at Panguana. They booked a flight from Lima to Pucallpa, a port city along the Ucayali River, on LANSA Flight 508, a turboprop airliner that could carry 99 people. The flight was supposed to last less than an hour.

However, the plane encountered a severe thunderstorm soon after takeoff. The aircraft began to shake violently and luggage and presents fell from the overhead bins. Juliane saw a bolt of lightning strike the right wing of the plane. Her mother calmly said: "That is the end, it's all over." Those were the last words Juliane ever heard from her.

The plane went into a nose-dive and broke apart in mid-air. Juliane found herself outside the plane, falling head-over-heels at a speed of 45 meters per second. She saw the canopy of the jungle spinning towards her and then lost consciousness.

A Miraculous Survival

Juliane woke up on Christmas morning on the ground, under her seat bench. She had fallen about 3,000 meters (10,000 feet) into the Amazon rainforest. She had a broken collarbone, a deep cut on her right arm, an eye injury and a concussion. She was wearing a sleeveless mini-dress and one sandal.

She was amazed that she had survived such a fall. Experts later speculated that she survived because she was harnessed into her seat, which was in the middle of her row, and the two seats on either side of her functioned as a parachute that slowed her fall. She was also wearing her seatbelt, which kept her fastened to the row of seats.

She looked around for her mother and other survivors but saw no one. She heard planes overhead searching for the wreck but they could not see her in the thick foliage. She realized she was alone in the jungle.

A Perilous Journey

Juliane remembered what her father had told her: if you get lost in the jungle, find a river and follow it downstream until you reach civilization. She decided to do that. She had no food or water with her but she knew some edible plants and fruits from her time at Panguana. She also knew how to avoid venomous snakes and spiders that looked like dry leaves.

She used her remaining sandal to test the ground ahead of her as she walked. She suffered from severe insect bites and an infestation of maggots in her wounded arm. She poured gasoline on her arm to force them out when she found an abandoned hut with a motorboat nearby.

She walked for 11 days along creeks and rivers until she reached a larger river where she saw a boat moored near a shelter. She gave herself first aid with supplies she found there and waited for someone to come back.

A few hours later, three local fishermen returned and were shocked to see her. They recognized her as one of the plane crash victims from the news and took care of her. They used their boat to take her to a nearby village where she was airlifted to a hospital in Pucallpa.

There, she was reunited with her father who had been searching for her and her mother for days. He told her that he had identified his wife's body among the crash victims. Juliane was the sole survivor of LANSA Flight 508.

A Life of Science

Juliane recovered from her physical and emotional injuries and returned to Germany with her father. She finished her education and became a biologist like her parents. She specialized in bats and worked at the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology in Munich.

She also returned to Peru several times to continue her parents' work at Panguana, which is now a protected ecological reserve. She wrote a book about her ordeal, titled When I Fell From the Sky, and participated in documentaries and interviews about her experience.

She said she never had nightmares or flashbacks about the crash. She said she learned to appreciate life more and not to take anything for granted. She said she felt a connection with the jungle and its wildlife, which saved her life.

She said: "I had nightmares for a long time, for years, and of course the grief about my mother's death and that of the other people came back again and again. The thought 'Why was I the only survivor?' haunts me. It always will."