In 1971 Juliane Koepcke survived a plane crash in the Peruvian jungle. Only now can she bear to tell the full story, in her memoir When I Fell from the Sky.
On Christmas Eve 1971, half an hour after take-off from Lima airport, Peru, a passenger plane bound for Pucallpa in the Amazon rainforest flew into a thunderstorm.
The plane started lurching and bumping in the air. Then, in a single, catastrophic moment, a bolt of lightning hit one of the fuel tanks and tore the right wing off. Lansa Flight 508 went into a nosedive and all 92 of its passengers and crew were killed, except for one.
One minute Juliane Koepcke, 17, was sitting in the window seat next to her mother; the next she was falling through the air, still strapped to her seat, and her mother had vanished. The filmmaker Werner Herzog, who some 30 years later was to make a documentary about Koepckeââ¬â¢s extraordinary survival, said, 'She did not leave the airplane, the airplane left her.ââ¬â¢
Koepcke remembers falling head first with the seatbelt digging into her stomach and a canopy of trees spiralling towards her. Then she lost consciousness. She came to the next morning on the floor of the rainforest.
She had somehow managed to drop two miles through the air and not only survive but walk away with apparently nothing more than concussion, a broken collarbone, a gash on her leg and a small cut on her arm.
Full article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...ole-survivor-the-woman-who-fell-to-earth.html
I would love to read this! Would you?
On Christmas Eve 1971, half an hour after take-off from Lima airport, Peru, a passenger plane bound for Pucallpa in the Amazon rainforest flew into a thunderstorm.
The plane started lurching and bumping in the air. Then, in a single, catastrophic moment, a bolt of lightning hit one of the fuel tanks and tore the right wing off. Lansa Flight 508 went into a nosedive and all 92 of its passengers and crew were killed, except for one.
One minute Juliane Koepcke, 17, was sitting in the window seat next to her mother; the next she was falling through the air, still strapped to her seat, and her mother had vanished. The filmmaker Werner Herzog, who some 30 years later was to make a documentary about Koepckeââ¬â¢s extraordinary survival, said, 'She did not leave the airplane, the airplane left her.ââ¬â¢
Koepcke remembers falling head first with the seatbelt digging into her stomach and a canopy of trees spiralling towards her. Then she lost consciousness. She came to the next morning on the floor of the rainforest.
She had somehow managed to drop two miles through the air and not only survive but walk away with apparently nothing more than concussion, a broken collarbone, a gash on her leg and a small cut on her arm.
Full article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...ole-survivor-the-woman-who-fell-to-earth.html
I would love to read this! Would you?
