Sole survivor of 1992 plane crash tells of 'fight or flight' response after British national survives Air India disaster

14 June 2025, 13:46 | Updated: 14 June 2025, 13:50

The sole survivor of a Vietnam Airlines crash that killed 30 people in 1992 has explained how she went into fight or flight mode in order to survive in the jungle for eight days.

Annette Herfkens and her fiance were passengers on small plane flying to Vietnam for a romantic getaway, when about 50 minutes into the flight the plane dropped suddenly twice, before crashing into the Vietnamese jungle.

Ms Herfkens told LBC's Matt Frei how she remembers waking up following the crash to see her fiance dead, still strapped into his seat, with "a sweet smile on his face".

She described the scene as "chaos" with "dead people everywhere". While some other passengers survived the initial crash, they soon died, leaving her the sole survivor.

Asked whether she knew what was happening when the plane started to crash, she explained: "There is no time. There's no time to see your life in front of you or to even think, to even realise. And so there is no scary thoughts last minute."

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Ms Herfkens suffered a number of broken bones and a collapsed lung, but managed to drag herself out of the plane, into the Vietnamese jungle, where she survived for eight days before she was rescued.

She told LBC: "You just do what your instinct tells you."

"I focused on the beauty of the jungle, not on dead people. I made steps in order to survive. I collected rain water. I congratulated myself when I actually took a sip and that's apparently what survivors do," she said.

She stayed next to a man with a watch for a while after the crash, but he started smelling "so terribly" and maggots started coming out of his eyes.

She explained: "Then I crawled away from him and I settled at a different spot where I thought that rescuers could see me. And that's when I figured out my plan to collect rainwater.

"I got the insulation material from the aeroplane and I made little bowls and waited for it to rain. And then I would suck a little bowl every two hours because you just get very, very, very, very thirsty."

While some would consider her lucky for survivng the crash, she explained that she had accepted death.

She said: "I lost my fiance, I lost my future. We were 13 years together. So I felt also I had this most beautiful near death experience in the jungle which I describe in my book too.

"And I know when the rescuers came, at first I didn't want to leave. I was really happily dying and it was beautiful.

"I became part of the jungle most beautiful experience and I didn't want to leave. I did not want to go back to life, not just without him, but dying was so beautiful."

Ms Herfkens has expressed her wish for the sole survivor of an Air India crash to not be "hunted down" by the press, as he has just lost his brother.

Vishwashkumar Ramesh was in seat 11A on the London-bound Boeing 787 flight when it crashed shortly after take off in Ahmedabad, western India on June 12.

She said: "He just lost his brother. And that's for him the most important thing, not the fact that he's a member of the sole survivor club.

"But thank God he's the same age and I was. He's a full grown man and he will be able to integrate it of course in his life."

She continued: "For him, it doesn't matter how his brother died, whether it was an air accident or a car crash. For everyone else, it's spectacular, but for him, he lost his brother, his parents lost his brother, and that is going to be his focus."