The Girl Who Fell from the Sky

Juliane Koepcke grew up between two worlds. Her parents were German zoologists who worked in Peru. When she was fourteen, they moved deep into the Amazon rainforest to set up a research station called Panguana. Juliane lived there with them, learning about the plants, animals and rivers of the jungle.

Her father taught her an important lesson. If you are ever lost in the forest, he said, find water. Follow a stream downhill until it becomes a river. Rivers lead to people.

Christmas Eve

In December 1971, Juliane was seventeen and had just graduated from high school in Lima, Peru's capital. On 24 December, she and her mother boarded LANSA Flight 508, a propeller plane, to fly to the town of Pucallpa and then go on to the research station to spend Christmas with her father.

About half an hour into the flight, the plane flew into a huge thunderstorm. It shook violently. Luggage fell from the overhead racks. Through the window, Juliane saw a bright flash of light on one wing. The plane had been struck by lightning.

She heard her mother say, calmly, that this was the end. Then the plane broke apart in the air.

The fall

Juliane found herself outside, still strapped into her row of seats, falling through the sky. She remembers the forest below, turning round and round, looking like heads of broccoli. Then she lost consciousness.

She fell about three kilometres. Experts have suggested that she may have survived because her row of seats spun like a helicopter's blades, slowing her fall, and because the dense rainforest canopy cushioned her landing.

When she woke up, it was the next day. She was alone on the forest floor, still under her seats. She had a broken collarbone, a deep cut on her arm, a concussion and an eye swollen shut. She had lost her glasses and one of her shoes. She was wearing a short summer dress.

Her mother was nowhere to be seen.

Alone

At first, Juliane searched for her mother and for other survivors, calling out. She found nobody. She heard rescue planes overhead, but the canopy was far too thick for them to see her.

She had a small bag of sweets she had found among the wreckage, and nothing else to eat.

Then she remembered what her father had told her. She found a small stream and began to follow it.

Following the water

For days, Juliane walked and waded along the stream as it grew into a river. She walked in the water partly because it was easier than pushing through the dense undergrowth, and partly because stingrays, which hide in the sand of riverbeds, are less likely to sting if you shuffle your feet as you go. She knew that from her life at Panguana.

She knew which animals were dangerous and which were not, and that the frightening noises of the forest at night were usually harmless. She swam where she had to, despite the risk of piranhas and caimans.

The cut on her arm became infested with fly larvae. Insects bit her constantly. She grew weaker and weaker.

The boat

On about the tenth day, she found a boat tied up on the riverbank, and a path leading to a small shelter. She knew someone must use it.

She poured petrol from a can she found onto the wound on her arm, a trick she had seen her father use on a dog, to drive out the larvae. Then she lay down in the shelter to wait. She did not want to take the boat, because it belonged to someone else.

The next day, some forest workers came back to the shelter and found her. At first, they were frightened, thinking she might be a spirit of the river. She explained, in Spanish, what had happened. They treated her wounds, and the following day they took her by boat to a town where she could get help.

The only survivor

Of the ninety-two people on board Flight 508, Juliane Koepcke was the only survivor. Her mother had died in the crash.

Juliane helped the search teams find the wreckage. Then she went to Germany, studied biology like her parents, and became a zoologist herself, specialising in bats. She eventually took over the running of Panguana, which is now a protected nature reserve, so that the forest that saved her life can go on being studied and protected.

Want to read more?

Juliane tells her own story in her memoir, When I Fell From the Sky. The filmmaker Werner Herzog, who had been meant to fly on the same plane but could not get a ticket, made a documentary with her called Wings of Hope, in which she returns to the crash site.