The Girl Who Fell 2 Miles From a Plane and Walked Out

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Juliane Koepcke fell two miles through the sky while still strapped to her seat. She hit the thick Amazon jungle floor in Peru and woke up alive. She was just seventeen years old, completely alone, and wearing a light summer dress.

This is the true story of how a teenage girl survived a plane crash, ten days in the wild jungle, and walked out without any help. Her story remains one of the most incredible human survival accounts ever recorded. If you love wild true stories of unbelievable survival, this night is one you will never forget.

The Plane Ride That Changed Everything

It was Christmas Eve in 1971. Juliane and her mother, Maria, got on LANSA Flight 508 in Lima, Peru. They wanted to fly to Pucallpa to see Juliane's father, Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke, for the holiday. The plane was a Lockheed L-188 Electra turboprop filled with ninety-two people.

About thirty minutes into the flight, the plane flew straight into a massive storm. The sky turned black as night, and the air got very rough. Wrapped presents flew around inside the cabin. People were crying and screaming as the plane shook up and down.

Then a bright flash of lightning hit the right wing. Juliane saw the wing light up in flames. Her mother turned to her and said her last words: "That is the end, it's all over." A second later, the plane snapped in half.

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Falling Two Miles Through the Dark

Juliane did not remember hearing the noise of the crash. All of a sudden, she was outside the plane. She was free-falling through the air, still strapped into her row of three seats. The wind hissed loudly in her ears as she tumbled down through the dark clouds.

She remembered seeing the jungle canopy below her spinning around like green cabbage heads. Then everything went dark. She lost consciousness as she fell two miles toward the ground.

Scientists later thought about how she survived that terrible fall. The seat row acted a bit like a parachute, slowing her down. Also, the super thick trees and heavy leaves of the Amazon rainforest caught her and broke her drop before she hit the dirt floor.

Waking Up Alone in the Amazon Jungle

Juliane woke up the next morning, on Christmas Day. She had been passed out for almost twenty hours. She lay under her seat, soaked with rain and covered in dirt. Her head was spinning, and she was blind in one eye because of the low air pressure in the sky.

She checked her body for injuries. She had a broken collarbone, a deep cut on her right arm, and a bad gash above her knee. Her eyeglasses were gone, and she had lost one of her white sandals. She was wearing only a simple mini dress.

She shouted for her mother, but only the sounds of bugs and birds answered back. She was totally alone in the middle of a vast, wet rainforest. She found a bag of hard candy in the mud near her seat. That small bag of candy was the only food she would have for the next ten days.

How Did Juliane Koepcke Survive in the Jungle?

Juliane did not panic because of something her father had taught her years before. Her parents were famous zoologists who ran a jungle research station called Panguana. Her dad had always given her key advice for getting lost: "Follow the water."

She knew a small stream would flow into a bigger stream, and a bigger stream would lead to a river. People always build their houses near big rivers. So, she began to walk. You can learn about real Survival skills that keep people alive in hard times like these.

Walking was pure torture. She had only one shoe, so she had to step carefully to protect her bare foot from snakes and sharp thorn bushes. Poisonous spiders crawled over her skin. She used her one shoe to test the ground ahead of her to watch out for snakes hiding under dead leaves.

Ten Days of Pain, Bugs, and Water

The heat was terrible during the day, and the rain poured down hard at night. Juliane could not sleep because of the swarms of mosquitoes. They bit her everywhere, making her body swell up with red bumps.

By the fourth day, she found three dead passengers still strapped to their seats. They had landed headfirst in the dirt. The sight scared her deeply, but she checked them to see if one was her mother. None of them were Maria. She picked up a small plastic ring from the wreckage to use as a water cup.

By day nine, her body was giving up. The deep cut on her right arm had turned bad. Flies had laid eggs in the wound, and maggots were eating her skin. The pain kept her awake all night. She was starving, her throat burned, and she could barely stand up.

She kept floating and swimming in the middle of the river. The water was safer than the shore, even with stingrays and caimans around. She knew the big animals usually left humans alone if she stayed in the open water.

The Miracle Boat and Rescue

On the tenth day, Juliane floated around a bend in the river and saw something that did not belong in the jungle. It was a small wooden boat tied to the riverbank. At first, she thought she was seeing things because her mind was so tired.

She dragged herself onto the land and found a tiny dirt path. The path led to a small wooden hut with a leaf roof. She crawled inside the hut and collapsed onto the bare floor. There was no one there, but she found a small container of gasoline for the boat engine.

She remembered a trick her father used on their dog when it got worms. She poured the gasoline directly into her arm wound. The burning pain was awful, but thirty maggots crawled out of her skin. She pulled them out one by one while crying on the floor.

That night, she slept inside the hut. Late the next afternoon, three Peruvian lumberjacks walked up the path to their hut. They saw a pale, bloody girl sitting in the corner. At first, they were scared. They thought she was a water spirit from local legends.

Juliane spoke to them in clear Spanish. She told them her name and explained that she fell out of a plane. The men were shocked, but they quickly cleaned her wounds, fed her some food, and took care of her overnight. The next morning, they put her in their boat and rowed her seven hours down the river to a small town called Tournavista.

The Aftermath of a Unbelievable Survival Story

A pilot flew Juliane from Tournavista to a hospital in Pucallpa. Her father rushed to her side, weeping with joy. They hugged each other tightly for a long time. Out of ninety-two people on that plane, Juliane was the only one who made it out alive.

Search teams found the crash site a few days later using the directions Juliane gave them. They found her mother's body, too. Maria had survived the initial fall, but she died of her injuries a few days later, before anyone could reach her.

Juliane moved to Germany after she recovered from her wounds. She went to college, studied biology, and earned a degree just like her parents. She grew up to become a successful scientist. For a long time, she felt guilty about being the only survivor. But she returned to Peru years later to run the Panguana research station her father started.

Her experience turned into a famous film by Werner Herzog and inspired many books about resilience. Her amazing path through the jungle shows how strong a person can be when they refuse to give up. Read more about Human-interest story news that touches people everywhere.

Juliane Koepcke survived because she stayed calm, remembered what her father taught her, and kept moving down that river. What would you do if you were lost in a jungle all alone? Tell us your thoughts below, or share this amazing story with a friend who loves true tales of human willpower. Check out our collection of incredible true survival tales for more stories like this.

TAGS: true stories, juliane koepcke, survival, amazon jungle, plane crash XPOST: A 17-year-old girl fell 2 miles from a blown-up plane, landed in the Amazon jungle, and walked out alive 10 days later. Here is her real story.