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 . '' Watch Koepcke tell her dramatic survivor 's story '' 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
MUNICH , Germany -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Juliane Koepcke is not someone you 'd expect to attract attention . Plainly dressed and wearing prescription glasses , Koepcke sits behind her desk at the Zoological Center in Munich , Germany , where she 's a librarian . Juliane Koepcke fell more than 3kms after the plane in which she was traveling broke up in midair . Yet this unassuming middle aged woman has one of the most exciting and unbelievable stories of tragedy and survival to tell . It 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