Juliane Koepcke, 17, was strapped into a plane wreckage hurtling uncontrollably towards Earth when she had a fleeting thought as she glimpsed the ground 3,000 meters below her.

While falling at 45 meters per second through the dense Peruvian rainforest, she thought the trees looked like broccoli heads.

A wild thunderstorm had destroyed the plane she was on, and the row of seats Juliane was still harnessed to twirled through the air as it fell.

She passed out, certain that the odd glimpse of lush Amazon trees would be her last.

But then Juliane awoke.

The jungle canopy was now above her.

Juliane, dressed in a torn sleeveless mini-dress and one sandal, had survived a 3km fall to Earth with only minor injuries.

Walking away from such a fall was miraculous, but the teen’s fight for life was just getting started.

She’d crashed-landed in Peru, in a jungle teeming with venomous snakes, mosquitoes, and spiders.

Returning to civilization meant that this brave young woman, the daughter of two famous zoologists, would have to forge her own path.

Scientists ‘jungle child’
Juliane, born in 1954 to German parents, was raised in the Peruvian jungle, from which she now needed to flee.

Her father, Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke, was a well-known zoologist, and her mother, Maria Koepcke, was a scientist who studied tropical birds.

They collaborated to establish Panguana, a biological research station, so they could immerse themselves in the lush rainforest’s ecosystem.

Juliane grew up as a “jungle child” on the station.

“I learned a lot about life in the rainforest, that it wasn’t too dangerous,” she told the BBC in 2012.

“It’s not the green hell that the rest of the world imagines.”

Juliane was homeschooled in Panguana for several years before moving to Lima, Peru’s capital, to complete her education.

Juliane and Maria booked tickets to return to Panguana to celebrate Christmas with her father in 1971.

Her mother wanted her to arrive early, but Juliane was determined to attend her Year 12 dance and graduation ceremony.

Their only option was to fly out on Christmas Eve on LANSA Flight 508, a turboprop airliner capable of carrying 99 passengers.

Juliane’s father knew the Lockheed L-188 Electra plane had a bad reputation.

58 of the 170 Electras built were written off after they crashed or experienced severe malfunctions in flight.

He advised them to take a different route, but with Christmas approaching, Juliane and Maria decided to book their tickets.

The flight appeared to be typical at first.

Juliane took the window seat in the second row from the back while her mother sat in the middle seat.

They ate their sandwiches while looking out the window at the rainforest.

However, 15 minutes before their scheduled landing, the sky darkened.

“Daylight fades to night, and lightning flashes in all directions. People gasp as the plane violently shakes “Juliane wrote about this in her memoir The Girl Who Fell From The Sky.

“Bags wrapped gifts, and clothing fall from overhead lockers. Sandwich trays fly through the air, and half-finished drinks land on passengers’ heads. People scream and cry.”

“I hope this goes okay,” Maria, a nervous flyer, murmured to no one in particular.

Juliane recalled seeing a huge flash of white light over the plane’s wing that appeared to send the plane into a nosedive.

“Now it’s all over,” Juliane remembered Maria saying calmly.

The screams of the other passengers and the thunderous roar of the engine seemed to fade away.

“The next thing I knew, I was no longer inside the cabin,” Juliane told the New York Times earlier this year.

“I was outside, in the open air. I hadn’t left the plane; the plane had left me.”

Juliane, most likely the only one in her row wearing a seat belt, plunged into the heart of the Amazon completely alone.

‘There was almost nothing my parents hadn’t taught me about the jungle.’
Juliane examined her injuries on the jungle floor.

She thought she had a concussion because she was groggy and confused. Her collarbone was also broken, and she had gashes on her shoulder and calf.

“I lay there, almost like an embryo, for the rest of the day and night, until the next morning,” she wrote.

Juliane had trouble orienting herself without her glasses. Her priority was to locate her mother.

Maria, an animal lover, had given her child a gift that would help save her.

She recognized the croaks of frogs and the bird calls around her.

“I recognized the sounds of wildlife from Panguana and realized I was in the same jungle,” Juliane recalled.

She wasn’t far from home. But one wrong turn and she’d be walking deeper and deeper into the world’s largest rainforest.

“My parents had taught me almost everything I knew about the jungle. I only had to search my concussion-fogged mind for this information.”

Juliane finally dragged herself from her plane seat and stumbled blindly forward.

She found a packet of lollipops that must have fallen from the plane and walked along a river, just as her parents had taught her.

Her father had warned her that piranhas were only dangerous in the shallows, so she floated in the middle of the river, hoping to run into other humans.

The jungle was in the midst of its wet season, so it rained nonstop. Everything was simply too damp for her to light a fire. No trees bore fruit.

“Much of what grows in the jungle is poisonous, so I keep my hands off what I don’t recognize,” Juliane wrote.

Juliane was terrified as she trudged through the Amazon on her fourth day.

Scavengers only gathered in large numbers when something died.

Juliane was drawn to a ghoulish scene by the call of the birds.

Three passengers still strapped to their row of seats had hit the ground with such force that they were half buried in the earth.

Juliane examined the toes of one of the passengers to make sure it wasn’t her mother.

“I took a deep breath after they were polished. My mother never used nail polish on her nails, “she stated.

Juliane could hear rescue planes searching for her, but the thick canopy of the forest kept her hidden.

She was sunburned, starving, and exhausted by the tenth day of her journey.

“Ice-cold raindrops pelt me, soaking my thin summer dress. The wind makes me shiver to my core. On those dark nights when I cower under a tree or in a bush, I feel completely abandoned, “She wrote.

But, around a bend in the river, she saw her salvation: a small hut with a palm-leaf roof.

She discovered a can of petrol inside.

Maggots had infested her shoulder gash.

She poured petrol on the wound, just as her father had done for a family pet.

“The pain was excruciating as the maggots worked their way deeper into the wound. I was very pleased with myself after pulling out about 30 maggots. I decided to spend the night there “she stated.

The next morning, she awoke to men’s voices and dashed from the hut.

The sight of the skinny, dirty, blonde girl terrified the local Peruvian fishermen.

“They thought I was some kind of water goddess — a figure from local legend who is a cross between a water dolphin and a blonde, white-skinned woman,” she explained.

Juliane’s parents, on the other hand, had given her one last key to her survival: they had taught her Spanish.

“I’m a girl who was in the LANSA crash,” she introduced herself in their native tongue.

“My name is Juliane.”

Why did Juliane survive?
Juliane has struggled to understand how she became the sole survivor of LANSA Flight 508.

In addition to Maria Koepcke, ninety other people were killed in the crash. It is believed that 14 people survived the impact but were unable to trek out of the jungle like Juliane.

The official cause of the crash was an intentional decision by the airline to fly the plane into hazardous weather conditions.

Juliane later discovered that the plane was entirely made of spare parts from other planes.

Juliane joined a small club as a result of her survival.

Dozens of people have fallen from planes and survived relatively unscathed.

Vesna Vulovi, a 23-year-old Serbian flight attendant, survived the world’s longest known fall from a plane without a parachute just one year after Juliane.

In1972, a mid-air explosion caused Vesna to plummet 9 kilometers into thick snow in Czechoslovakia. She had a skull fracture, two broken legs, and a broken back.

But she survived. Nobody knows why.

Juliane has several theories about how she got back in one piece.

She wonders if the powerful updraft of the thunderstorm slowed her descent, or if the thick canopy of leaves cushioned her landing.

She now sees the world through the eyes of her parents, as a biologist.

In her mind, her plane seat spun like the seed of a maple leaf, which twirls through the air with remarkable grace like a tiny helicopter.

Nature’s forces are usually too strong for any living thing to overcome. But, very rarely, fate favors a tiny creature.

An upward draft, a benevolent canopy of leaves, and pure luck can all work together to safely deliver a girl back to Earth like a maple seed.

That little girl grew up to become a world-renowned bat researcher.

She still runs Panguana, her family’s legacy that stands proudly in the forest that transformed her.

“The jungle is as much a part of me as my husband’s love, the music of the people who live along the Amazon and its tributaries, and the scars from the plane crash,” she said.

Share on Facebook