Juliane Köpcke

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Juliane Diller (born 1954 in Lima as Juliane Margaret Köpcke) is best known for being the sole survivor of 93 passengers and crew in the December 24, 1971, crash of (a LANSA Lockheed Electra OBLANSA Flight 508-R-941 commercial airliner) in the Peruvian rainforest.

Airplane crash

Juliane Köpcke was a German high school senior studying in Lima, intending to become a zoologist, like her parents. She and her mother, famed ornithologist Maria Köpcke, were traveling to meet with her father, biologist Hans-Wilhelm Köpcke, who was working in Pucallpa.

The airplane was struck by lightning during a severe thunderstorm and exploded in mid-air, disintegrating 3.2 km up. Köpcke, who was 17 years old at the time, fell to earth still strapped into her seat. She survived the fall with only a broken collarbone, a gash to her right arm and her right eye swollen shut.

Her first priority was to find her mother, who had been seated next to her on the plane but her search was unsuccessful. She later found out her mother had died in the crash.

Köpcke was soon able to locate a small stream. She then waded through knee-high water downstream from her landing site, relying on the survival principle her father had taught her that tracking downstream should eventually lead to civilization. The stream also provided clean water and a natural path through the dense rainforest vegetation. After 9 days, she found a canoe and a nearby shelter, where she waited.

Hours later, the lumbermen who resided in the shelter arrived and tended to her injuries & bug infestations. The next morning they took her via a 7-hour canoe ride down the river to a lumber station in Tournavista, from where she was airlifted with the help of a local pilot to her father and a hospital in Pucallpa.
Subsequent events

Her experience is the subject of two films, the first being the 1974 Giuseppe Maria Scotese film Miracoli accadono ancora, I (Miracles Still Happen), and the most recent being the 2000 Werner Herzog film Wings of Hope. Herzog was inspired to make the film as he narrowly avoided taking the very same flight while he was location scouting for Aguirre, Wrath of God. His reservation was canceled due to a last minute change in itinerary.

Köpcke returned to Germany, where she fully recovered from her injuries and continued her studies, eventually earning a PhD degree in zoology, like her parents, in 1987. Now known as Dr. Juliane Diller, she specializes in mammalogy, studying bats in Munich, Germany, and working at the Munich Zoological Center, where she is a librarian. Juliane Koepcke's memoir Als ich vom Himmel fiel [When I Fell From the Sky] will be published on March 10, 2011 by the German publisher Piper Malik.

TEXT COMPREHENSION

01- Juliane Diller lives in______________.

a) Munich

b) Hamburg

c) Lima

d) Pucallpa

e) Cusco

02- Juliane's _________helped her survive immediately after the fall.

a) friends

b) knowledge

c) seat

d) mom

e) dad

03- On the airplane, there were ___________

passengers.

a) ninety one

b) ninety two

c) ninety three

d) ninety four

e) ninety five

04- The airplane crash happened in the ________________century.

a) seventeenth

b) eighteenth

c) nineteenth

d) twentieth

e) twenty first

05- Check the correct alternative according to the text:

a) Aguirre, Wrath of God is a film about the flight 508

b) The air crash happened 49 years ago

c) Juliane was rescued after seven days

d) Juliane's dad was a victim of flight 508 too

e) The air crash happened on Christmas Eve

06-Choose the correct sentence according to the text:

a) Juliane is fifty five years old

b) Juliane lives in Peru nowadays

c) The flight was from Lima to Berlin

d) Juliane escaped 'cos she had a parachute

e) juliane's memoir was published by Piper Malik.