LANSA Flight 508 was a plane crash that occurred on December 24, 1971 over the Peruvian Amazon jungle with a balance of 91 dead and with only one young survivor, Juliane Kopcke.
LANSA Flight 508
A LANSA Lockheed L-188 Electra similar to the accident aircraft
It is the deadliest lightning strike disaster in history.[1]
Accident
Flight 508 took off late around noon heading to Pucallpa and then continued to the city of Iquitos in the middle of the Peruvian jungle.
It crossed the Peruvian Andes at 7000 m in good weather, having made its last report when it flew over Oyón in the Sierra de Lima, entering 40 minutes after takeoff in Amazonian skies where a bad weather front was germinating. The plane lost height to 6,000 m and began to shake, causing concern among the passengers.
The developing storm was a Cumulonimbus type with intense electrical activity and the aircraft was subjected to turbulent air currents.
The voice of a Flight attendant was heard over the loudspeakers:
Passengers, we inform you that the area of turbulence we are going through is due to a major storm over the Amazon jungle. Fasten seat belts
The shakes became more and more violent and the carry-on luggage spilled out of their cubicles. The plane descended about 4,000 m and the pilot was looking for denser air to make an emergency landing.
At about 12:36 p.m., a lightning bolt is said to have struck the plane over the right wing and set fire to the fuel tank (a fact that was never actually proven with certainty), the fire causing general structural failure. that departed the aircraft at tail level:
The plane split in two just in front of me a few rows from the tail, at times the weightlessness accompanied the feeling of vertigo of an abyss visible around us. My mother forcefully unclasped her hand from mine so that I would never touch her alive again.
Juliane Koepcke, the only survivor, fell from an altitude of 2,000 meters, next to the burning wreckage of the plane, into the jungle.
