The trip started off without incident. In order to spend Christmas with her father, Hans-Wilhelm, Koepcke and her mother, Maria, were taking a plane from Lima to Pucallpa, Peru.
After graduating from high school, the adolescent girl took her usual window seat. The airliner was shaken by turbulence around 20 minutes before landing.
As people became nervous, luggage and packages fell. The aircraft’s right wing was then hit by lightning.
on her book When I Fell From the Sky, Koepcke writes, “I’m no longer in the airplane, and my mother is no longer at my side.”
I’m alone myself at a height of around 10,000 feet. And I’m descending, cutting through the heavens.
Still tied to her seat, Koepcke plunged into the jungle canopy as the jet broke apart. She doesn’t remember falling on the ground.
