LANSA Flight 508

LANSA Flight 508 was a Lockheed L-188A Electra turboprop operated as a scheduled domestic passenger flight by Lineas Aéreas Nacionales Sociedad Anonima (LANSA, a Peruvian airline company) which crashed in a thunderstorm en route from Lima to Pucallpa in Peru on 24 December 1971, killing 91 people — all six of its crew and 85 of its 86 passengers. It is the deadliest lightning strike disaster in aviation history.

Crash


LANSA Flight 508 departed Lima's Jorge Chávez International Airport just before noon on Christmas Eve on its way to Iquitos, Peru, with a scheduled stop at Pucallpa. The aircraft was flying at about 21000 ft above mean sea level when it encountered an area of thunderstorms and severe turbulence. Some evidence showed the crew decided to continue the flight despite the hazardous weather ahead, apparently because of pressure to meet the holiday schedule. Peruvian investigators cited "intentional flight into hazardous weather conditions" as a cause of the crash.

Victims and sole survivor
The sole survivor was 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke, who while strapped to her seat fell 3,000 m into the Amazon rainforest. She survived the fall with a broken collarbone, a deep gash to her right arm, an eye injury, and concussion. She was able to trek through the dense Amazon jungle for 10 days and found shelter in a hut. Local lumberjacks found her and took her by canoe back to civilization. The Electra was LANSA's last aircraft; the company lost its operating permit eleven days later.

As many as 14 other passengers were also later found to have survived the crash, but died awaiting rescue.

In popular culture
The movie Miracles Still Happen (1974) is based on the story. Koepcke's story was also told in the documentary film Wings of Hope (1998) by director Werner Herzog, who had narrowly avoided taking the same flight, when his reservation had been canceled due to a last minute change in itinerary. Koepcke's memoir Als ich vom Himmel fiel was published by the German publisher Piper Malik on March 10, 2011. (The English edition, titled When I Fell From the Sky, was published by Titletown Publishing in November 2011.)

The crash also features in the final season one episode of the Discovery Channel documentary Aircrash Confidential. The episode was first aired in 2011, and features an interview with Koepcke.