Juliane Koepcke

Koepcke was born in Lima, Peru, in 1954 to German parents who worked at the Museum of Natural History, Lima. She was the only child of biologist Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke and ornithologist Maria Koepcke. When Koepcke was fourteen, her parents left Lima to establish Panguana, a research station in the Amazon rainforest. She became a "jungle child" and learned survival techniques. Educational authorities disapproved and Koepcke was forced to return to the Deutsche Schule Lima Alexander von Humboldt to take her examinations. She graduated on 23 December 1971.[1]

Maria, Juliane's mother, was working in Lima when Juliane was about to graduate from high school. Maria had wanted to return to Panguana with Juliane on 19 or 20 December 1971, but Juliane wished to attend her graduation ceremony on 23 December. Maria agreed for Juliane to stay for longer and, instead, they scheduled a flight on Christmas Eve. All flights were booked, aside from one with Líneas Aéreas Nacionales S.A. (LANSA). Her father Hans-Wilhelm urged Maria to avoid flying with the airline, which had a poor reputation.[1] They booked the flight, nonetheless.

The LANSA Lockheed L-188 Electra OB-R-941 commercial airliner was struck by lightning during a severe thunderstorm and broke-up in mid-air, disintegrating 3.2 kilometres (2.0 mi) above the ground. Koepcke, still strapped onto her seat, survived the fall to earth, suffering a broken collarbone, a gash to her left leg and to her right arm, and her right eye was swollen shut.[2] "I was definitely strapped in it [the airplane seat] when I fell," she said later. "It must have turned and buffered the crash; otherwise I wouldn't have survived."[3] Koepcke's first priority was to find her mother, who had been seated next to her, but her search proved unsuccessful. She would later learn that her mother initially had survived the crash also, only to die of her injuries a few days later.[4]

Surviving on sweets she found at the site, Koepcke waded downstream through knee-high water, as her father had taught her that tracking downstream should eventually lead to civilization.[2] After ten days, she found a boat moored near a small shelter.[5] She poured gasoline from the fuel tank on her wounds to clear them of maggots and spent the night in the shelter.[4] Koepcke said: "I remained there but I wanted to leave. I didn't want to take the boat because I didn't want to steal it."[6] The next morning, a small group of local fishermen discovered her and brought her to their village.[7] The following day, a local pilot volunteered to fly her to a hospital in Pucallpa,[8] where she was reunited with her father.[9]

After recovering from her injuries, Koepcke assisted search parties in locating the crash site and recovering the bodies of victims. Her mother's body was discovered on 12 January 1972.[10]

Koepcke's unlikely survival has been the subject of much speculation. It is known that she was belted into her seat and thus somewhat shielded and cushioned, but it also has been theorized that the outer seats of the row—those on each side of Koepcke, which remained attached to hers as part of a row of three—functioned as a parachute and slowed her fall.[2][11] The impact may have been lessened further by a thunderstorm updraft and the thick foliage at her landing site.[2][11]

She moved to Germany, where she fully recovered from her injuries. Like her parents, she studied biology at the University of Kiel and graduated in 1980.[12] She received a doctorate from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and returned to Peru to conduct research in mammalogy, specializing in bats.[12] Koepcke published her thesis, Ecological study of a bat colony in the tropical rain forest of Peru, in 1987.[13]

Now known as Juliane Diller, she serves as librarian at the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology in Munich.[2] Her autobiography, When I Fell from the Sky (German: Als ich vom Himmel fiel), was released on 10 March 2011 by Piper Verlag,[14] for which she received the Corine Literature Prize in 2011.[15] In 2019, the government of Peru awarded her the Order of Merit for Distinguished Services, in the degree of Grand Officer.[16]

Having been widely reported, Koepcke's experience is the subject of one feature-length fictional film and one documentary. The first was the low-budget, heavily-fictionalized, I miracoli accadono ancora (1974) by Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Maria Scotese; it was released in English as Miracles Still Happen (1974) and sometimes is called The Story of Juliane Koepcke. In that film, she was portrayed by British actress Susan Penhaligon.[17]

Twenty-five years later, director Werner Herzog revisited the story in his film Wings of Hope (1998). While location scouting for Aguirre, the Wrath of God in 1971, Herzog would have been on the same flight as Koepcke, had it not been for a last-minute change of his itinerary.[18] Koepcke accompanied him on a visit to the crash site, a journey she described as "a kind of therapy" for her.[19]

• Koepcke, Juliane (1987). Ökologische Studien an einer Fledermaus-Artengemeinschaft im tropischen Regenwald von Peru (Thesis) (in German). Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
• Koepcke, Juliane (2011). Als ich vom Himmel fiel [When I fell from the sky] (in German). Munich: Piper Malik. ISBN 978-3-89029-389-9.
• Koepcke, Juliane (2011). When I Fell from the Sky. Translated by Benjamin, Ross. Titletown Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9837547-0-1.

• List of sole survivors of aviation accidents or incidents

• Plane Crashes Since 1970 with a Sole Survivor. airsafe.com
• Juliane Koepcke in the German National Library catalogue