Survivor Recalls 1971 Air Crash
PHILLIPS: Dramatic new details today about the final moments of that Air France jet that crashed off the coast of Brazil. French investigators have determined the plane did not break apart before the crash, but it's still not clear what caused the plane to fall into the Atlantic. The 228 people on board the Airbus A-330 apparently had no time to prepare for impact.</s>ALAIN BOUILLARD, AIR FRANCE ACCIDENT INVESTIGATOR (through translator): The plane did not break up or become destroyed in flight. From all these -- from what I've showed you structurally, the plane went straight down towards the surface of the water, almost vertically. Practically at a vertical -- on a vertical line, very, very fast.</s>PHILLIPS: Well, there were no survivors in that Air France crash, but there was a miracle survivor in this week's airliner crash off the Comoros islands, and she's been reunited with her father. The 13-year-old arrived today in Paris, aboard a government plane. She spent about 13 hours clinging to wreckage in the Indian Ocean before she was rescued. Her mother was among the 152 people killed in the Yemeni airline crash. An amazing story of survival, and it reminded us of an equally incredible story from almost 40 years ago. That's when a German teen became the only survivor when a plane broke apart over the Peruvian rainforest, but surviving the crash was just the beginning of her ordeal. CNN's Frederik Pleitgen has her story.</s>FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was Christmas Eve 1971, a day after her high school prom, when Juliane Koepcke, then 17 years old, boarded a plane like this one in Lima, Peru.</s>JULIANE KOEPCKE, 1971 PLANE CRASH SURVIVOR (through translator): There were dark clouds all around us and lightning everywhere and suddenly we saw a bright flash. The plane went into a nosedive. I believe the wing then tore off.</s>PLEITGEN: Seconds later, at about 9,000 feet, the aircraft broke into pieces. Juliane was thrust out, still strapped to her seat.</s>KOEPCKE (through translator): There was an amazing silence around me. The plane was gone. I must have been unconscious and then woken up in midair. I was flying, spinning through the air. And I could see the forest spinning under me.</s>PLEITGEN: She fell more than two miles into the thick rain forest but miraculously survived with only minor injuries.</s>KOEPCKE (through translator): I didn't wake up until the next morning, so I must have been unconscious for the afternoon and the whole night, and then I was all alone, just my row of seats and me.</s>PLEITGEN: Her collarbone was broken and she'd suffered a concussion, but despite her injuries, she dragged herself through the rain forest for ten days, until she was found. Juliane survived, she says, thanks to skills her father, a rain forest biologist, had taught her.</s>KOEPCKE (through translator): He says if you find a creek, follow it, because that will lead to a stream and a stream will lead to a bigger river, and that's when you'll find help.</s>PLEITGEN: When a group of lumberjacks found Juliane Koepcke, the Peruvian authorities had already given up the search for survivors. Juliane finally led them to the wreckage. Years later, Juliane visited the crash site again and found debris from the plane still strewn across the jungle. Today, she says, the events of 1971 come back to haunt her when she hears of disasters like the Air France crash.</s>KOEPCKE (through translator): Just thinking about it horrifies me.</s>PLEITGEN: Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Munich, Germany.</s>PHILLIPS: Well, they've always had a special relationship. Now Michael Jackson makes a special request of his lifelong friend, Diana Ross.