Falling Two Miles From a Plane and Walking Out Alive

A visual reconstruction of Juliane Koepcke moving through the Peruvian rainforest after surviving the fall from LANSA Flight 508. (Digital Illustration: GoBeyondLocal)

Falling Two Miles From a Plane and Walking Out Alive

Juliane Koepcke was 17 when she boarded LANSA Flight 508 in Lima on Christmas Eve 1971.

Her mother, Maria Koepcke, was travelling beside her. They were flying towards Pucallpa, where Juliane would spend Christmas with her father, Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke, who worked in the Amazon rainforest.

About half an hour after takeoff, the aircraft entered severe storm conditions. Lightning struck the plane. The aircraft began breaking apart in the sky.

Juliane was still strapped into her row of seats when the cabin disappeared around her.

She fell through open air with the seat still attached to her. The aircraft was thousands of metres above the rainforest, and pieces of the plane were falling around her.

Juliane later regained consciousness beneath the Amazon canopy. She had survived the fall.

The injuries became apparent as she tried to move. Her collarbone was broken. A deep cut ran along her arm, and one knee had suffered ligament damage. A concussion and an eye injury added to the problems she faced.

Her glasses had disappeared during the fall. The forest around her was dense, and the wreckage of the aircraft was scattered across a huge area.

Juliane had little to work with. She remembered that water could lead a person through unfamiliar rainforest towards larger streams and rivers, a lesson she had learned from her parents during childhood in the Amazon.

She began looking for running water.

A small stream gave her a direction. She followed it through vegetation and uneven ground, moving with injuries that made each stretch of forest harder to cross.

Juliane also had to deal with the condition of her body. The wound on her arm deteriorated, insects attacked her skin, and her vision remained impaired after losing her glasses.

She had been travelling with a Christmas cake intended for her father. After waking beneath the trees, she picked it up and ate some of it.

Food soon became a much smaller part of what she could rely on. Water was easier to find than something to eat, so the stream became her main guide through the forest.

Juliane kept moving beside the water for several days. She stumbled across wet ground, climbed around obstacles and passed through thick vegetation while her injuries remained untreated.

Her parents had taught her about rainforest plants and animals, and those lessons gave her practical knowledge of the environment surrounding her.

The wound on her arm attracted flies. Maggots later developed inside it, adding another problem to the injuries from the crash.

Juliane remembered a treatment her father had used on an injured dog. At an abandoned shelter, she found fuel and poured some over the affected area. The liquid drove the larvae from the wound.

By this stage, the forest had become a long stretch of wet ground, vegetation and flowing water. Juliane kept following the stream while her supply of food stayed extremely limited.

She continued alone through the Amazon, sleeping where she could and using the watercourse as her guide.

Search aircraft had been looking for the missing LANSA plane, yet the rainforest made the wreckage difficult to locate. Ten days passed before reports reached Pucallpa that a young survivor had been found.

Juliane had reached an area associated with a logging operation.

She was severely weakened by the time she reached the camp. Local woodcutters found her and gave her food and assistance.

After days in the forest, Juliane had reached people who could take her beyond the trees.

The woodcutters placed her in a boat and began taking her along the river. The trip towards medical care took another two days.

Juliane was eventually brought to Pucallpa, where she received treatment for the injuries and physical effects of the time spent alone in the rainforest.

She was the sole survivor of LANSA Flight 508. Her mother had also been aboard the aircraft, while the other passengers and crew died in the disaster.