There are stories of people who inexplicably walk away from airplane crashes, and there are stories of solo survival in the jungle without any supplies. And then there’s the story of Juliane Koepcke, who, at age 17, survived a fall of 10,000 feet (3,000 m) during the LANSA Flight 508 disaster and then trekked for 11 days through the jungle to make her way back to civilization.
On December 24, 1971, Koepcke was seated in a window seat in the second-to-last row of a Lockheed L-188A Electra turboprop airliner next to her mother, Maria. They were traveling from Lima, Peru, where Juliane attended school, back to their home at the biological research station of Panguana, in the Peruvian Amazon. Juliane’s parents, Maria and Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke, renowned German-born scientists, had founded the station a few years earlier. Juliane had mainly been homeschooled, yet needed to attend school in Lima to complete her exams.
Tragically, although Maria Koepcke had wanted to return to Panguana a few days earlier, she eventually agreed to the Christmas Eve flight so that Juliane could attend a school dance and graduation ceremony. But around fifteen minutes before the plane was scheduled to land in Pucallpa, a thunderstorm suddenly began. The plane was struck by lightning and fell apart, with Juliane hurtling towards the rainforest canopy below.
Incredibly, Juliane, still strapped to her seat, survived the fall of around 10,000 feet, perhaps because of an updraft from the thunderstorm or a soft landing due to the rainforest canopy. The row of seats that Juliane was strapped to may have functioned as a helicopter, helping to control her fall.
Juliane’s injuries were relatively minor—a broken collarbone, an eye injury, gashes on her shoulder and leg, and, most likely, a concussion. She had lost her glasses and was wearing only a thin sundress and one sandal.
Yet Juliane had spent years in the rainforest, raised by zoologist parents who had taught her everything they knew about survival, as well as the plants and animals around her. She was much better equipped than most to stay alive, even after the ordeal she had endured. Walking or floating along a river and eating a bag of sweets found on the forest floor, she eventually found a lumberjack encampment after 10 days alone in the jungle. The men helped treat her wounds and took her by canoe to a more populated area, where she was airlifted to a hospital and reunited with her father.
Undeterred by her traumatic experience and the loss of her mother, Juliane’s love of the rainforest wasn’t dampened. After completing her education in Germany, she became a mammalogist and bat expert, later taking on the role of running Panguana, the research station her parents had founded.
They fell from the sky and survived:
Investigators later concluded that at least 14 other passengers likely survived the initial crash of LANSA Flight 508, yet none was able to make it out of the jungle. Maria Koepcke was among the 91 people who died as a result of the crash.
- Incredibly, Juliane is not the only person to have fallen from an airplane at great height and survived. Vesna Vulović (1950–2016) holds the Guinness World Record for the longest known fall without a parachute.
- In January 1972, Vulović, then 22, was a flight attendant for Jat Airways, the national flag carrier of Yugoslavia, when an explosion ripped through the plane. She fell 6.31 miles (33,333 feet, or 10.16 km), landing in deep snow in the present-day Czech Republic.
- Despite suffering numerous injuries, including a broken back, a skull fracture, and two broken legs, and temporarily becoming paralyzed, Vulović made a full recovery except for a limp. She wanted to return to work as a flight attendant, but the airline, concerned about too much media attention, instead relegated her to a desk job.
