Seven-year-old plane crash survivor used burning wreckage to make a torch so she could find help

The seven-year-old girl who walked away from a plane crash in the US state of Kentucky used a stick lit with fire to find her way through a kilometre of thorny woodland to find help.

Sailor Gutzler dragged herself out of the private twin-engine plane last Friday night, bloodied and with a broken wrist, to find her parents, sister and cousin all dead.

She used the burning wreckage to make a torch to guide her way through the forest in the dark until she saw a light on in a house and knocked on the front door, it has emerged.

Sailor's relatives have since told NBC News the girl used survival skills passed down by her father to find her way to safety.

The man who opened his door to Sailor said he found the little girl barefoot with blood on her face, legs and arms and her voice quivering as she explained that her family had just died in a plane crash.

"I felt so sorry for her, tears come my eyes," said Larry Wilkins, who called emergency services and used a washcloth to clean up the bloodied girl.

The Gutzler family and the cousin were returning from a Christmas holiday in Key West, Florida, to their home in southern Illinois when the plane crash-landed upside down in forest.

The crashed killed pilot Marty Gutzler, 48, his 45-year-old wife Kimberly, their nine-year-old daughter Piper and Sailor's cousin, 14-year-old Sierra Wilder.