She Survived Against All Odds

This remarkable true story is indeed stranger than fiction. It’s about a girl who survived against all odds when everyone else died.

Juliane Koepcke was a 17-year-old girl. She was the daughter of a German scientist who was working in the Amazon rainforest.

On the Christmas Eve of 1971, she and her mother boarded LANSA Flight 508 at Lima Airport in Peru. They were flying to Pucallpa, Peru, to visit her father.

As their aircraft flew over the Peruvian jungle, it encountered a massive thunderstorm. Lightning struck the plane’s right wing, causing the fuel tank to explode. The plane literally came apart in mid-air, about 10,000 feet above the ground.

Juliane, still strapped to her seat, was ejected from the plane. She plummeted through the storm, the clouds, and the jungle canopy. She somehow survived the fall.

But her nightmare wasn’t over.

Juliane regained her conscience the next day. She was alone in the jungle. She had a broken collarbone, a deep cut on her leg, and a swollen eye.

There was no sign of the plane or other survivors.

She was wearing a sleeveless mini-dress and one sandal. She had no food. She only had a small bag of candy. And she was in one of the world’s most dangerous rainforests.

Her father had taught her how to survive in the rainforest: how to follow water downstream, how to avoid predators, and how to find help. Drawing on that knowledge, she set off and followed a small creek.

She walked for 10 days. Ten days through the thick jungle, in pain, hungry, soaked by rain, bitten by insects, and infested by maggots in her wounds.

She had to wade through rivers filled with piranhas and crocodiles.

She saw rescue planes overhead, but they never saw her.

On the tenth day, she stumbled upon a small hut and a group of local loggers. At first, they thought she was a forest spirit. She barely looked human after days in the forest.

But the loggers quickly realized that she needed help. They gave her first aid. The next day, she was transported to a hospital.

Juliane was the only survivor of Flight 508. All the other 91 passengers and crew died in that crash.

Her story became a sensation. She even returned where it all happened, years later, to help shoot a documentary.

To this day, Juliane Koepcke is the only known person to have survived a fall from an airplane without a parachute from such a height, and made it out of the jungle alive.