andes flight crash

Andes flight crash: disaster or miracle?

How it started

The flight 571 of the Uruguayan Air Force was supposed to leave from Montevideo to Santiago on 13th october 1972. tThe plane was transporting an amount of 45 people, most of which were young adults from the Old Christian Club rubgby team.

The pilots, however, had misjudged the location of the flight, which was in fact not over the Andes. Oblivious of the mistake, controllers from Montevideo told them to begin descending in preparation for landing.

Due to bad atmospheric conditions, the pilots decided to plan a course south to the Pass of Planchón, where the plane could have safely cleared the mountain chain.

The rescue

After two months, with just 16 people still alive, three expeditionaries set out for help, though one later returned to the plane. After walking for weeks, the other two men (Roberto Canessa and Nando Parrado) finally came across three Chileans were on the opposite side of a river, so the two groups communicated by writing notes on paper that they then wrapped around a rock and threw across the water. The survivors’ initial note began: “I come from a plane that fell in the mountains.” The authorities were notified, and on December 22 two helicopters were sent to the wreckage.

The crash

The plane then struck a mountain, losing its right wing and then its left before crashing into a remote valley of Argentina near the Chilean border.

• A search for the missing plane was organized, but it soon became clear that the last reported location was wrong.
• Rescue efforts moved to the Andes and survivors even reported spotting several planes.

• However, the snow made the discovery of the white plane very tough.
• Furthermore, the harsh environment led many to believe that there were no survivors.
• After eight days, the search was called off.

This story (told by press as a "miracle" though being a disaster) inspired several books and three movies: "Survive!" (1976), "Alive" (1993) and "Society of the Snow" (2023), candidate to Oscar 2024 as "Best foreing movie".

victims (29)

Gastón Costemalle, Alexis Hounié, Guido Magri, Ovidio Ramìrez, Ramón Martínez, Daniel Shaw, Carlos Valeta, Colonel Julio César Ferradas, Dr. Francisco Nicola, Esther Horta Pérez de Nicola, Eugenia Dolgay Diedug de Parrado, Fernándo Vázquez, Francisco "Panchito" Abal, Felipe Maquirriain, Julio Martínez-Lamas, Lt. Col. Dante Héctor Lagurara, Graziela Augusto Gumila de Mariani, Susana Parrado, Sgt. Carlos Roque, Daniel Maspons, Juan Carlos Menéndez, Liliana Navarro Petraglia de Methol, Gustavo "Coco" Nicolich, Marcelo Pérez, Enrique Platero, Diego Storm, Arturo Nogueira, Rafael Echavarren, Numa Turcatti

survivors (16)

José Pedro Algorta, Roberto Canessa, Alfredo "Pancho" Delgado, Daniel Fernandez, Roberto "Bobby" François, Roy Harley, José Luis "Coche" Inciarte, Alvaro Mangino, Javier Methol, Carlos "Carlitos" Páez, Fernando Parrado, Ramon "Moncho" Sabella, Adolfo "Fito" Strauch, Eduardo Strauch, Antonio "Tintin" Vizintin, Gustavo Zerbino

How they managed to survive: the cannibalism solution

the only solution left was to eat the corpses

• moral and ethical issues came up: the dead bodies were once their relatives and friends
• in addition, doing such a thing was sinful and against any religious belief

The crash initially killed 12 people, leaving 33 survivors, some of which were seriously injured. After nursing them with crash rests, survivors used the plane's fuselage (the aircraft body) to protect themself from freezing. To survive, the passengers used the left food supplies (mainly candy bars and wine); when these were gone in about a week, they started eating any kind of leftovers, such as tissues or cigarettes.

After discussing it for several days, a group of them decided to dig up the corpses and to give them to the rest of the passengers without telling which person they were about to eat.

interview to one of the survivors about eating his friends to survive