Woman made chilling joke as her plane was crashing before surviving 192 hours alone in the Vietnamese jungle
As the plane which Annette Herfkens and her fiancé were travelling on suddenly started to nosedive as they flew over the Vietnamese jungle, she made a joke in the hopes of calming her other half's nerves.
But at the time, the Dutch author, now 63, had no idea how much her words would come back to haunt her.
She ended up being the sole survivor of a horror plane crash in November 1992 and miraculously managed to persevere in the wilderness for another eight days - despite being gravely injured - before she was eventually rescued.
Annette and her partner of 13 years, Willem van der Pas, were among the 26 passengers and six crew members who were onboard Vietnam Airlines Flight 474 when it smashed into a mountaintop en route to Nha Trang Airport.
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After running into a spot of bad weather, the Yakovlev Yak-40 aircraft descended to a dangerous altitude, slammed into trees which lined the ridge of the Ô Kha mountain in Vietnam and crashed.
Annette was the only one to make it out of the jungle alive, and later penned a poignant book regarding her dance with death more than three decades ago - detailing how she lost her beloved fiancé as they headed on a romantic getaway.
Annette had met Willem - who she fondly refers to as Pasje - back in the Netherlands when they both attended Leiden University, and said they quickly 'knew they were destined to get married' to one another.
Annette was working as a trader while her boyfriend was a banker, and they were both regularly sent abroad for work.
In 1992, she was based in Madrid, while Willem was out in Vietnam - so they organised a reunion.
The trader flew out to Ho Chi Minh City to meet her other half, who then surprised her with a five-day trip to the coastal city of Nha Trang, which meant Annette had to hop back on another plane.
Speaking to the New York Post in 2016, she said: "I was excited for the surprise getaway. But I felt so claustrophobic, I shuddered as we boarded the cramped Vietnam Airlines plane."
Annette recalled how she had even asked Willem whether they could take an alternative mode of transport, but he informed her that it would take too long, whereas the flight was only quick.
So, albeit a little 'nervous', the trader took her seat on the plane.
Around 50 minutes into the journey, Annette explained that the plane suddenly 'experienced a tremendous drop' which seemed to alarm Willem, so she decided to crack a joke to put him at ease.
At the time, she was blissfully unaware it would be one of the last things she ever said to him.
Recalling their final conversation, she continued: "'Of course, a sh*tty little toy plane drops like this!' I said, reaching for his hand. 'It’s just an air pocket — don’t worry'.
"But he was right to worry. We dropped again. Someone screamed. It went pitch-black. Seconds later, we made impact."
Although she 'doesn't remember exactly what happened', Annette assumes that she was thrown around the aircraft - causing her to sustain a rang of serious injuries to her head and limbs.
She was not wearing a seatbelt when the incident occurred - but she later found out this likely saved her life, as other passengers, including Willem, who were wearing them ended up with crushed ribs and lungs.
"At some point I must have landed and slipped under a seat, legs first, and gotten stuck," Annette explained. "This kept me in place for the second, bigger impact, which caused the plane to break up."
After around five hours, Annette woke up and came to the horror realisation that Willem had died in the crash.
Somehow she made her way out of the wreckage, even though 'everything hurt', and she began to take account of her injuries - her jaw was 'hanging loose' and she had sustained a fractured hip as well as a collapsed lung.
She told how she could hear 'faint moans' from inside the plane, eventually finding a 'badly hurt' Vietnamese man who reassured her rescue teams would be coming - but he, and any other survivors, passed away as the days went on.
This left Annette to navigate this 'weird, unreal reality, where everything was green' alone.
"Over the following days, even though I was grieving for Pasje, I concentrated on my survival," she explained.
Survival mode kicked it and Annette knew she needed to stay hydrated - so she headed up to the shattered wing of the plane, tore some insulation from it, and collected rainwater with small sponges she fashioned from it.
The sole survivor explained she resisted the urge to break down in tears, as if she gave into her emotions, she would give up on her mission to stay alive - so instead, she 'stayed in the now'.
"I listened to my heart and instinct, and not to my mind, because the mind makes up stories that can frighten you," Annette recalled. "I trusted that they were going to find me.
"I did not think: 'What if a tiger comes?' I thought: 'I’ll deal with it when the tiger comes'. I did not think: 'What if I die?' I thought: 'I will see about it when I die'."
A Vietnamese policeman did eventually stumble upon the scene - but bizarrely, he fled.
Annette explained as the officer had 'never seen a white woman before', he genuinely thought she was a 'ghost'.
But thankfully, he informed local authorities about what he had seen in the jungle and 192 hours after the plane had crashed - and after a hell of a week - the sole survivor of Vietnam Airlines Flight 474 was rescued.
Annette admitted the physical recovery she faced was difficult, but the psychological one was even harder.
Speaking of losing Willem, she said: "It felt like I was widowed. I attended his funeral in Breda, Holland. [I was] brought into the church on a stretcher, I felt surreal - like a bride taken down the aisle to meet her groom in his coffin."
In desperate need of some normality, Annette made the decision to return to her job in Madrid.
She went on to marry a co-worker, who she then moved to New York City with before welcoming two children.
Annette wrote the book Turbulence: A True Story of Survival in 2014 which detailed her ordeal and incredible story of survival - with experts telling her she did 'all the right things' to make it through the perilous circumstances.
But to this day, the official cause of the crash remains a mystery.
Topics: Travel, World News, Health, Mental Health, Books
Olivia Burke