On December 24, 1971, seventeen-year-old Juliane Koepcke boarded LANSA Flight 508 with her mother in Lima, Peru. They were flying home to Pucallpa to spend Christmas with Juliane’s father, a biologist working in the Amazon rainforest. The flight was delayed, and when it finally took off, it headed straight into a violent tropical storm.
Midair, the plane was struck by lightning.
The impact tore the aircraft apart at nearly 10,000 feet. Pieces of the plane scattered into the clouds. Juliane, still strapped to her seat, was violently ejected from the aircraft and plunged nearly two miles through the air toward the Amazon below.
She lost consciousness.
Falling… and Surviving
When Juliane woke up, she was lying on the forest floor. Somehow—against all odds—she was alive. The dense jungle canopy likely broke her fall, and the seat she was strapped into acted like a crude parachute.
She had a broken collarbone, deep cuts on her arm and leg, and a severe concussion. One eye was swollen shut. She had no food, no tools, and no idea where her mother was (tragically, her mother did not survive).
But Juliane had one advantage: she knew the jungle. Her parents were scientists who had raised her in the Amazon, and she remembered one crucial rule her father had taught her:
If you’re lost in the rainforest, follow water. Streams lead to rivers. Rivers lead to people.
Ten Days Alone in the Amazon
For 10 days, Juliane walked through the jungle alone. She survived on rainwater and a few candies she found in the wreckage. Insects constantly attacked her wounds, and maggots began to infest an open gash on her arm.
Despite pain, fever, and exhaustion, she kept moving—always downstream.
On the tenth day, she came across a small shelter used by local loggers. Nearby was a boat, and inside it she found a can with gasoline still in it. Remembering what she had once seen adults do, Juliane poured the gasoline onto her infected wound. The pain was unbearable—but it killed the maggots.
That night, she collapsed near the shelter.
Rescue
The next day, local loggers found her. At first, they thought she was a ghost—this young girl, injured, barefoot, and alone in the jungle. When she told them about the plane crash, they rushed her to help.
Juliane Koepcke was taken to a hospital, where doctors confirmed what sounded impossible:
Out of 93 people on LANSA Flight 508, Juliane was the only survivor.
Aftermath
Juliane later returned to the jungle to help search for her mother and the crash site. She went on to become a biologist, just like her parents.
She rarely calls her survival a miracle.
Instead, she credits:
- Luck
- The rainforest canopy
- Her father’s jungle knowledge
- And one thing above all: never giving up