On Christmas Eve, 1971, 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke boarded LANSA Flight 508 with her mother. Just half an hour into the flight, lightning struck the plane, causing it to break apart in midair and hurl Juliane — still strapped to her seat — into the open sky. She fell nearly 10,000 feet into the Amazon rainforest.
Against all odds, she survived. Injured and alone in one of the most dangerous places on Earth, Juliane relied on what her parents had taught her. She recalled her father’s advice: “Follow water — it will lead you to people.”
For eleven days, she pushed forward—fighting hunger, swarms of insects, festering wounds, and the relentless jungle. She found an abandoned hut and poured gasoline into her injuries to clean them. Not long after, local loggers found her and carried her to safety.
Juliane was the only survivor among 91 passengers.
But her story didn’t end in tragedy. Instead of fearing the jungle, she dedicated her life to it — becoming a biologist at Panguana, her family’s Amazon research station. She later wrote her memoir, When I Fell from the Sky.
Her life remains one of the greatest survival stories ever told—proof that even when everything seems lost, the human spirit can endure.