Sole Survivor: 8 days in the jungle after my plane crashed

独存者:飞机坠毁后的8天丛林生活

Lives Less Ordinary

2025-09-01

40 分钟
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How a romantic getaway ended in disaster. Dutch financier Annette Herfkens boarded Vietnam Airlines Flight 474 in November 1992, embarking on what was meant to be a romantic break with her fiancé Willem van der Pas or ‘Pasje’. But fate had other plans. Midway through the flight from Ho Chi Minh City to the coastal resort of Nha Trang, the Soviet-built Yakovlev Yak-40 encountered severe weather and slammed into a remote, fog-shrouded mountain ridge in the dense Vietnamese jungle. The impact was catastrophic, killing all 30 other passengers and crew on board, including Annette's beloved Pasje.   Incredibly, Annette emerged as the sole survivor of the crash, defying odds in one of the most amazing real-life tales of endurance. Thrown from the wreckage with devastating injuries—including a collapsed lung, a broken jaw, two fractured legs, and a dozen fractures in her hips—she found herself stranded amid the twisted metal and bodies of her fellow travellers. Unable to walk or even crawl far, she endured eight gruelling days in the unforgiving wilderness, battling excruciating pain, dehydration, and the psychological torment of her loss. With no food, she sustained herself solely on rainwater collected from the jungle foliage, her will to live fuelled by sheer determination and fleeting moments of hope that a rescue would come. Annette’s book is called Turbulence: A True Story of Survival. Presenter: Asya Fouks Producer: Edgar Maddicott Lives Less Ordinary is a podcast from the BBC World Service that brings you the most incredible true stories from around the world. Each episode a guest shares their most dramatic, moving, personal story. Listen for unbelievable twists, mysteries uncovered, and inspiring journeys - spanning the entire human experience. Our latest mini-series Hold Fast! tells the incredible true story of how The Avontuur was locked down at sea for 188 days during the Covid-19 pandemic, with 15 people on board. Step into someone else’s life and expect the unexpected.   Got a story to tell? Send an email to liveslessordinary@bbc.co.uk or message us via WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784   You can read our privacy notice here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5YD3hBqmw26B8WMHt6GkQxG/lives-less-ordinary-privacy-notice
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  • There is a giant drop, and then accelerating motors, then another giant drop, people screaming.

  • He looks at me, I look at him, he grabs my hand, I grab his, and everything goes black.

  • Next, I wake up to chaos.

  • Today, the sole survivor of a plane crash who spent eight days in the jungle fighting for her life,

  • Annette Herfkins was on a romantic getaway with her fiancé in 1992 in Vietnam when the plane they were on hit turbulence and went down.

  • How did she manage to stay alive?

  • And what did those eight harrowing days teach her about finding beauty in life's darkest moments?

  • From the BBC World Service, this is Lives Less Ordinary.

  • I'm Asya Fuchs.

  • When Annette met a man named Willem van der Pas, or Pasha as she often called him,

  • as students back in 1979, it didn't take long for sparks to fly.

  • We started going out because he said something, he dared me.

  • He said, he said, I know something you don't dare.

  • And that's how we kissed first.

  • And then we were already really best friends because we're living in the same student home.

  • So wait, what was the dare?

  • The dare, kissing him.

  • Oh, okay.

  • Bold.

  • And that really, that was really like the thing to get to me because that was really, oh, oh really.