She Fell 10,000 Feet Into the Amazon Rainforest and Walked Out Alive 11 Days Later

On December 24, 1971, LANSA Flight 508 took off from Lima, Peru, carrying 86 passengers and 6 crew on a short hop to Pucallpa. Among them was 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke, seated next to her mother in a window seat.

Twenty-five minutes into the flight, the plane flew into a massive thunderstorm. Lightning struck the right wing. The fuel tank ignited. The aircraft disintegrated at approximately 10,000 feet.

The Fall

Juliane was still strapped to her row of three seats when she fell. The row spun as it descended, which she later compared to "a winged maple seed." She lost consciousness during the fall.

She woke up on the jungle floor the next day. Still strapped in. The dense canopy of the Amazon had broken her fall. She had a broken collarbone, a deep gash on her right arm, and a torn ligament in her knee. She could see with only one eye.

She was the only one of 92 people on board to survive the crash.

11 Days in the Amazon

Juliane's parents were both zoologists who ran a research station in the Peruvian rainforest. Her father had taught her one survival rule: if you're lost in the jungle, find water and follow it downstream. It always leads to people.

She found a small stream and began walking. The jungle offered no food she could identify as safe, so she went without eating. Within days, the wound on her arm became infested with botfly larvae. She could feel them moving under her skin.

On the tenth day, she found a boat and a small shelter belonging to lumberjacks, but no people. She found a container of gasoline and poured it into the wound on her arm, extracting roughly 35 larvae. She spent the night in the shelter.

The next morning, the lumberjacks returned and found her. They treated her wounds and transported her by canoe to a town where she could reach medical help.

Aftermath

Juliane Koepcke recovered fully. Her mother, Maria, initially survived the crash as well, but died of her injuries several days later in the jungle before rescuers found her. Juliane later returned to Peru, earned a PhD in zoology, and continued her parents' research. She wrote a memoir in 2011.

The one thing that saved her was the simplest piece of advice her father ever gave: follow the water.