Luck
From CNN:
"t was Christmas Eve, 1971, when Koepcke, then aged 17, and her mother boarded a Lockheed Electra turboprop for a flight from Lima, Peru, to Pucallpa in the Amazonian rainforest. Her parents, both famous zoologists, ran a research station in the jungle studying wildlife.The airline, LANSA, had already lost two aircraft in previous crashes. "We knew the airline had a bad reputation," Koepcke told CNN, "but we desperately wanted to be with my father for Christmas, so we figured it would be alright."
The flight was supposed to last for less than an hour and for the first 25 minutes everything was fine, Koepcke recalled.
"Then we flew into heavy clouds and the plane started shaking. My mother was very nervous. Then to the right we saw a bright flash and the plane went into a nose dive. My mother said, 'This is it!'"
An accident investigation later found that one of the fuel tanks of the Lockheed Electra had been hit by a bolt of lightning which had torn the right wing off.
"We were headed straight down. Christmas presents were flying around the cabin and I could hear people screaming." Video Watch Koepcke tell her dramatic survivor's story ยป
As the plane broke into pieces in midair, Koepcke was thrust out into the open air:
"Suddenly there was this amazing silence. The plane was gone. I must have been unconscious and then came to in midair. I was flying, spinning through the air and I could see the forest spinning beneath me."
Then Koepcke lost consciousness again. She fell more than three kilometers (two miles) into the jungle canopy but miraculously survived with only minor injuries. Ninety-one other people aboard Flight 508 died."