Flight origin

The Tinguiririca Volcano as seen from the Tinguiririca river valley

Members of the amateur Old Christians Club rugby union team from Montevideo, Uruguay, were scheduled to play a match in Santiago, Chile, against the Old Boys Club, an English rugby team.^[2] Club president Daniel Juan chartered a Uruguayan Air Force twin turboprop Fairchild FH-227D airplane to fly the team over the Andes mountains to Santiago. The aircraft carried 40 passengers and 5 crew members. The pilot in command, Colonel Julio César Ferradas, was an experienced Air Force pilot with 5,117 hours of flight time. He was accompanied by co-pilot Lieutenant-Colonel Dante Héctor Lagurara. There were ten extra seats, so the team invited friends and family members to accompany them. When someone cancelled at the last minute, Graziela Mariani purchased a ticket so she could attend her oldest daughter's wedding.^[2]

The aircraft departed Carrasco International Airport on 12 October 1972, but a stormfront over the Andes forced them to spend the night in Mendoza, Argentina, to wait for meteorological conditions to improve. Although there is a direct westerly route from Mendoza to Santiago, the high mountains including Mount Aconcagua at 6,959 metres (22,831 ft) were near the FH-227D's service ceiling of 8,500 metres (28,000 ft).^[3][4] With the aircraft loaded to capacity, this direct route would have required the pilot to fly very carefully to avoid the mountains. Instead, it was customary for turboprops to fly the longer 600-kilometre (370 mi), 90-minute U-shaped route^[2] to Malargüe south of Mendoza using the A7 airway (now UW44), then west along the G-17 airway (now UB684), crossing Planchón pass and on to the Curicó radiobeacon in Chile, and from there due north to descend and land in Santiago.^[5][6]

The weather on 13 October affected the flight adversely. On the morning of the flight meteorological conditions over the Andes had yet to improve, but the weather was expected to improve by the early afternoon. The pilot delayed the flight and took off from Mendoza at 2:18 p.m. on Friday 13 October. He flew south towards the Malargüe radiobeacon at flight level 180 (18,000 feet or 5,500 metres). Lagurara radioed their position to Malargüe Airport to inform them that they expected to cross the 2,515 metres (8,251 ft) high Planchón pass at 3:21 p.m. Planchón pass is the air traffic control hand-off point between Chile and Argentina.^[7][8] After crossing the Andes into Chile the aircraft was supposed to turn north and initiate their descent into Pudahuel Airport in Santiago.

The crash

Pilot Ferradas had previously flown across the Andes 29 times. On this flight he was training co-pilot Lagurara, who was at the controls. As they flew above the Andes, clouds obscured the mountains below.^[9][5] The aircraft was four years old with 792 hours on the airframe.^[10] The plane was nicknamed the "lead-sled" by pilots because they considered it underpowered.^[11][12]

Due to cloud cover the pilots were flying under instrument meteorological conditions at an altitude of 5,500 metres (18,000 ft) at FL180 through the 2,515 metres (8,251 ft) high Planchón pass and could not visually confirm their location from the terrain below.

At 3:21 p.m., shortly after crossing Planchón pass, Lagurara notified air traffic controllers that he expected to reach Curicó a minute later. While some reports state the co-pilot incorrectly estimated his position using dead reckoning, he was relying on radio navigation.^[12] For unknown reasons, he did not see the aircraft's VOR/DME navigation radio displaying the bearing and distance to the Curicó radio beacon, still 60–69 km (37–43 mi) due west of Planchón pass.

The flight time from Planchón pass to Curicó is normally 11 minutes, but only three minutes later the co-pilot radioed Santiago that they were overflying Curicó and turning due north. He requested permission from air traffic control to descend. The controller authorized the aircraft to descend to 3,500 metres (11,500 ft), unaware due to lack of radar coverage that the airplane was still flying over the Andes.^[9][12][5] Pilot Ferradas also failed to notice the navigation error.

The aircraft encountered severe turbulence as it descended. Nando Parrado recalled that the plane rapidly descended several hundred feet out of the clouds. At first the rugby players joked about the turbulence until they saw the aircraft was flying abnormally close to the mountains. "That was probably the moment when the pilots saw the black ridge rising dead ahead."^[13]

Roberto Canessa later said he thought the pilot had turned due north too soon and began the descent to Santiago while the aircraft was still flying over the Andes. Then "he began to climb, until the plane was nearly vertical and it began to stall and shake."^[14] The aircraft's ground collision alarm sounded and scared all the passengers.^[6]

The pilots applied maximum power to gain altitude and climb over the 4,200 metres (13,800 ft) high southern ridge of the glacier's cirque. Witness accounts and evidence at the scene indicated the plane struck the mountain two or three times.

The co-pilot was able to bring the aircraft nose over the ridge, but at 3:34 p.m., the lower part of the tail-cone may have clipped the ridge at 4,200 metres (13,800 ft). The next collision severed the right wing. Some evidence indicates it was thrown back with such force that it may have been the event that tore off the tail-cone. When the tail-cone was sheared off, it took with it the rear part of the aircraft, including two rows of seats, the galley, baggage hold, vertical stabilizer and horizontal stabilizer, leaving a gaping hole in the rear. Three passengers, the navigator and the flight attendant were lost with the tail section.^[5][2]

The aircraft's momentum and its remaining engine carried it forward and upward until a rock outcropping at 4,400 metres (14,400 ft) tore off the left wing. Its propeller sliced through the fuselage.^[5] Two more passengers fell out the gaping hole in the rear. The fuselage crashed onto the snow and careened 725 metres (2,379 ft) down the steep slope of the glacier at 350 km/h (220 mph) like a high-speed bobsled, rammed into a snow bank and came to a sudden stop. The seats broke loose from the floor and were thrown against the forward bulkhead of the fuselage. The impact crushed the cockpit, pinning both pilots against the instrument panel, killing Ferradas immediately.^[15]

The official investigation concluded that the crash was caused by controlled flight into terrain due to pilot error.^[7][16]

The plane's fuselage came to rest in the cirque of the then unnamed glacier (later named Glaciar de las Lágrimas or Glacier of Tears) at 34°45′53.5″S 70°17′06.6″W / 34.764861°S 70.285167°W / -34.764861; -70.285167 at an elevation of 3,570 metres (11,710 ft), in the Malargüe Department in the Mendoza Province of Argentina. The glacier lies between the 5,169 metres (16,959 ft) high Mount Sosneado and the 4,280 metres (14,040 ft) high Tinguiririca volcano, straddling the remote mountainous border between Chile and Argentina. It is south of a 4,650 metres (15,260 ft) high mountain (later named Mount Seler by Nando Parrado in honor of his father). Two survivors later climbed the peak before descending into Chile to get help. The aircraft came to rest 80 km (50 mi) to the east of its planned route.^[5]

Unsuccessful air search

Unknown to the survivors, the abandoned summer resort Hotel Termas El Sosneado was only 21 km (13 mi) due east from the crash site.

The Chilean Air Search and Rescue Service (SARS) was notified within the hour that the flight was unaccounted for. Four planes searched during the afternoon until dark. News of the missing flight reached Uruguayan media around 6:00 p.m. that evening. SARS officers listened to radio transmissions and concluded the aircraft must have crashed in one of the most remote and inaccessible areas of the Andes and asked the Andes Rescue Group of Chile (CSA) for assistance. Unbeknownst to the passengers on board, or even the rescuers, the flight had crashed in Argentina even before crossing into Chile, about 21 km (13 mi) from the Hotel Termas El Sosneado, an abandoned hot springs resort that would have provided some shelter and warmer temperatures due to the lower altitude.^[2]

On the second day, eleven aircraft from Argentina, Chile and Uruguay searched for the missing flight.^[2] The search area covered the accident location and a few aircraft even overflew the crash site. The survivors tried to use lipstick recovered from their luggage to write an SOS message on the roof of the fuselage, but did not have enough lipstick to make large letters that could be seen from the air by rescuers. They also used luggage to fashion a cross on the snow, but it failed to attract the attention of the rescuers.^[17] The survivors saw aircraft overfly the crash site on three occasions but the rescuers were unable to spot the white fuselage against the snow.

The harsh conditions gave the rescuers little hope that they would find anyone alive so rescue efforts were cancelled after only eight days of searching.^[19] On 21 October, after having searched for more than 142 hours, the searchers concluded the chances of anyone surviving the crash were nil and terminated the search. They planned to resume the search to recover the victims in December after the snow melted.

First week of survival

Another five passengers and crew died during the first night: co-pilot Lagurara, Francisco Abal, Graziela Mariani, Felipe Maquirriain and Julio Martinez-Lamas.

The remaining 28 survivors removed the broken seats and other debris to fashion the fuselage into a crude shelter 2.5 by 3 metres (8 ft × 10 ft) small. They used luggage, seats and snow to close off the rear end of the fuselage. Fito Strauch devised a solar-powered water collector with sheet metal he retrieved from under the seats. To prevent snow blindness, he also improvised sunglasses by cutting the green plastic sun visors in the cockpit and sewing the pieces to bra straps with electrical wire. They used the woollen seat covers to keep warm and seat cushions as snowshoes. The captain of the rugby team, Marcelo Perez, took on a leadership role.^[17][19]

After three days Parrado regained consciousness only to find out his mother had died and his 19-year-old sister Susana was severely injured. He tried to keep his sister alive but on the eighth day she too died from her injuries.^[18] The remaining 27 survivors had a hard time during the nights when temperatures plunged to −30 °C (−22 °F).^[20] They all had lived their entire lives by the sea and some had never even seen snow before the crash. None had any high-altitude survival experience to speak of. They lacked medical supplies, cold-weather clothing, equipment and food and they only had three pairs of sunglasses amongst themselves to keep from going snow-blind.

They found a small AM transistor radio jammed between two aircraft seats. Roy Harley improvised a long antenna using electrical wire from the plane^[6] and on the eleventh day on the mountain heard the news that their search had been called-off. Piers Paul Read's book Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors describes how they reacted:

The others who had clustered around Roy, upon hearing the news, began to sob and pray, all except [Nando] Parrado, who looked calmly up at the mountains which rose to the west. Gustavo [Coco] Nicolich came out of the aircraft and, seeing their faces, knew what they had heard… [Nicolich] climbed through the hole in the wall of suitcases and rugby shirts, crouched at the mouth of the dim tunnel, and looked at the mournful faces looking at him. "Hey boys," he shouted, "there's some good news we just heard on the radio! They've called off the search!" Inside the crowded aircraft there was silence. As the hopelessness of their predicament enveloped them, they wept. "Why the hell is that good news?" Paez shouted angrily at Nicolich. "Because it means," [Nicolich] said, "that we're going to get out of here on our own." The courage of this one man prevented a flood of total despair from overcoming the group.^[21]

Resorting to survival cannibalism

The survivors had very little food to eat. All told they managed to scrounge together eight chocolate bars, three small jars of jam, a tin of mussels, a tin of almonds, a few dates, some candy, dried plums and several bottles of wine and even though they rationed the food, it only lasted for a week. Parrado only ate a single chocolate-covered peanut in three days.^[19][2] Even with their strict rationing, the food supply dwindled quickly. There was no natural vegetation and no animals anywhere in sight for them to eat. They became ill when the food ran out and they ate the cotton stuffing from the seats and leather from belts and shoes.^[19]

Knowing that rescue efforts had been called off and facing certain death from starvation, the survivors gave each other permission to use their bodies for food in case they died. Left with no alternative, the survivors consumed the bodies of their deceased friends and relatives.^[17][19] Canessa later described the decision to eat the dead:

Our common goal was to survive, but what we lacked was food. We had long since run out of the meager pickings we'd found on the plane, and there was no vegetation or animal life to be found. After just a few days, we had the sensation that our own bodies were consuming themselves just to remain alive. Before long we would become too weak to recover from starvation.

We knew the answer, but the answer was just too terrifying to contemplate.

The bodies of our friends and team-mates preserved outside in the snow and ice contained the vital, life-preserving proteins that would keep us alive. But could we do it? For a long time we agonized. I went out in the snow and prayed to God for guidance. Without His consent, I felt I would be violating the memory of my friends, that I would be stealing their souls.

We wondered whether we were going mad to even contemplate such a deed. Had we turned into brute savages? Or was this the only alternative for us to survive? Truly, we were pushing the limits of our fear.^[22]

The group survived by eating the bodies of their dead comrades. This decision was not taken lightly, as most of the dead were classmates, close friends or relatives. Canessa cut the meat with a shard of broken windshield glass. He set the example by swallowing the first matchstick-sized lump of human flesh. Several others followed suit over the next few days, but a few still kept refusing to eat human flesh or just could not bring themselves to eat the life-saving protein.^[2]

In his memoir, Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home (2006), Parrado wrote about this decision:

At high altitude, the body's caloric needs are astronomical. We were seriously starving with no hope of finding food, but our hunger soon grew so voracious that we searched anyway. Again and again we scoured the fuselage in search of crumbs and morsels. We tried to eat strips of leather torn from pieces of luggage, though we knew that the chemicals they'd been treated with would do us more harm than good. We ripped open seat cushions hoping to find straw, but found only inedible upholstery foam. Again and again I came to the same conclusion: Unless we wanted to eat the clothes we were wearing, there was nothing here [to eat] but aluminum, plastic, ice, and rock.^{[23]: 94–95}

Parrado protected the bodies of his mother and sister so they would not be eaten. They dried the meat from the bodies in the sun to make it easier to eat. At first they were so disgusted by the experience that they could only eat skin, muscle and fat, but when they ran out they ate hearts, lungs and even brains.^[23]

All of the passengers were Roman Catholic. Some feared eating human flesh would lead to eternal damnation. According to Read, some survivors compared their cannibalism to the Eucharist, i.e. the conversion of bread and wine into the Body and the Blood of Jesus Christ. Others cited John 15:13 from the Bible to justify their cannibalism: 'No man hath greater love than this: That he lay down his life for his friends.'

All who survived the ordeal made the decision to eat human flesh, though not without serious reservations. Javier Methol and his wife Liliana, the only surviving female passenger at the time, were the last to eat human flesh. Liliana had very strong religious convictions against doing so and only reluctantly agreed to eat after someone suggested that doing so was akin to receiving the Holy Communion.^[24][25]

First avalanche

Close to midnight on 29 October and seventeen days after the crash, an avalanche struck the fuselage while the survivors were asleep, almost completely filling the fuselage with snow and ice and smothering eight people to death: Enrique Platero, Liliana Methol, Gustavo Nicolich, Daniel Maspons, Juan Menendez, Diego Storm, Carlos Roque and Marcelo Perez. The death of Perez, rugby team captain and leader of the survivors, along with the loss of Liliana Methol, who had nursed many injured passengers "like a mother and a saint", were particularly difficult to bear for the remaining survivors.^[18][24]

The avalanche completely buried the fuselage filling it to within 1 metre (3 ft) of the ceiling. The survivors trapped inside quickly realized they would soon run out of air. Parrado took a metal pole from the luggage racks and used it to pry open one of the cockpit windscreens and to poke a hole through the snow for fresh air.^[26][27] On the morning of 31 October they were able to dig an exit tunnel with considerable difficulty from the cockpit to the surface, only to be faced with a blizzard that made them crawl back into the fuselage.

The blizzard raged furiously for three days trapping the survivors together with the bodies of the deceased inside the snow-filled fuselage. On the third day they began to eat the flesh of their newly deceased friends. Parrado later said: "It was soft and greasy, streaked with blood and bits of wet cartilage. I gagged hard when I placed it in my mouth."^[18][19]

With Perez dead, Daniel Fernández and cousins Eduardo and Fito Strauch assumed the leadership of the group. They took over harvesting the flesh from the deceased and distributing it for others to eat.^[17]

Before the avalanche a few survivors insisted the only way to survive would be to climb over the mountains to get help. Because the co-pilot kept repeating before he died that the aircraft had overflown Curicó, the survivors believed the Chilean countryside was closest at only a few kilometres to the west. Unbeknownst to them, they had crashed deep in the Andes mountain range and the Chilean countryside was a distant 89 km (55 mi) to the west. As the days passed, with the advent of summer the temperature rose and the snow that had buried the fuselage began to melt away.

Exploring the area surrounding the crash site

In the first few weeks after the crash some survivors set out on brief expeditions to explore the immediate vicinity of the aircraft but they found that altitude sickness, dehydration, snow blindness, malnourishment and the extreme night-time cold made it impossible to travel any significant distance from the crash site.^[9]

The decision was made for a few survivors to leave on an expedition to get help. Some survivors were determined to join the expedition team, including Canessa (one of the two medical students) but other survivors were less willing to do so or were unsure of their ability to stand up to such a physically demanding ordeal. Numa Turcatti and Antonio Vizintin were selected to accompany Canessa and Parrado, however Turcatti's wounded leg had become infected so he was unable to join the expedition. Canessa, Parrado and Vizintín were among the most physically fit and were allocated larger rations of meat to build their strength for the expedition and the warmest clothes to withstand the night-time cold they would have to face on the mountain.^[17] They were also excused from carrying out the daily tasks essential to the group's survival so they could focus on training for the upcoming ordeal. At Canessa's urging, they waited the better part of a week for temperatures to increase.

The expedition aimed to head west to Chile but the large mountain on the western rim of the glacier's cirque presented a formidable obstacle so instead the team of three decided to head east. They hoped the valley would make a U-turn to the west that would lead them to Chile. On 15 November after several hours of walking 1.6 km (1 mi) downhill east of the fuselage, they found the tail section of the aircraft with the galley mostly intact. They also found luggage with a box of chocolates, three meat patties, a bottle of rum, cigarettes, extra clothes, comic books, some medicine and, most importantly, they also found the aircraft's batteries. They decided to seek shelter for the night inside the tail section, started a fire to stay warm, and stayed up late reading comic books.^[17]

The next morning they continued descending to the east, but on the second night of the expedition they nearly froze to death. They decided to return to the tail section and bring the batteries to the fuselage. They hoped they could power the radio and make an SOS call to Santiago for help.^[19]

Radio inoperative

Upon returning to the tail, the trio found that the 24-kilogram (53 lb) batteries were far too heavy to carry back to the fuselage, an uphill climb in the deep snow from the tail section. Instead they decided it would be better to return to the fuselage, disconnect the radio, and bring it back to the tail section where the batteries were. Roy Harley used his knowledge as an amateur electronics enthusiast to assist in the process. Unbeknownst to them, the aircraft's avionics required 115 Volt AC power while the battery from the tail section only supplied 24 Volt DC,^[6] thus dooming their plan from the start.

They gave up after several days of not being able to make the radio work and returned to the fuselage realizing they would have to climb out of the mountains on their own terms to get help if they were to have any chance of surviving. Along the way they were struck by another blizzard and Harley wanted to just give up and die, but Parrado would not have any of it and helped him back to the fuselage.^[17]

Three more deaths

Arturo Nogueira died on 15 November and three days later, Rafael Echavarren also died, both from their infected wounds. Numa Turcatti, whose extreme revulsion against eating human flesh dramatically accelerated his physical decline, died on day 60 (11 December) weighing only 25 kg (55 pounds). The remaining survivors knew they would all die if they did not leave soon to get help.^[19] The survivors heard on the transistor radio that the Uruguayan Air Force had resumed searching for them.^[28]

Making a sleeping bag

The remaining survivors came to the realization that the only way out was to climb over the mountains on the western rim of the glacier's cirque, and that such a climb was impossible unless they found a way to survive the freezing night-time temperatures they would find at altitude. They fashioned a sleeping bag with insulation from the rear of the fuselage, electrical wire and the waterproof fabric that covered the plane's air conditioning unit.^[20][19] Parrado described in his book, Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home, how they came up with the idea of making a sleeping bag:

The second challenge would be to protect ourselves from exposure, especially after sundown. At this time of year, we could expect daytime temperatures well above freezing, but the nights were still cold enough to kill us, and we knew now that we couldn't expect to find shelter on the open slopes.

We needed a way to survive the long nights without freezing and the quilted insulation we'd taken from the tail section gave us our solution. As we brainstormed about the upcoming trip, we realized we could sew the patches together to create a large warm quilt. Then we realized that by folding the quilt in half and stitching the edges together, we could create an insulated sleeping bag large enough for the three of us to sleep in. With the heat from of our three bodies trapped by the insulation, we might be able to survive even the coldest nights.

Carlitos [Páez] took on the challenge. His mother had taught him to sew when he was a boy and with needles and thread from the sewing kit he found in his mother's vanity case, he began to work. To speed up progress, Carlitos taught others to sew, and we all took our turns. Coche [Inciarte], Gustavo [Zerbino], and Fito [Strauch] turned out to be our best and fastest tailors.^[23]

Turcatti died after the sleeping bag was completed. Canessa was still hesitant about the trip. While the remaining survivors encouraged Parrado to go on the expedition, no one actually volunteered to go with him. Parrado finally persuaded Canessa it was time to set out and together with Vizintín, the three expeditionaries took to the mountain on 12 December.^[19]

Climbing the western peak

The survivors' expedition had to climb the western rim of the glacier cirque before descending into Chile. A rock pile memorializing the victims and survivors is in the foreground.

Without any mountaineering gear, on 12 December 1972 Parrado, Canessa and Vizintín began climbing the glacier at an altitude of 3,570 metres (11,710 ft) aiming for the 4,670 metres (15,320 ft) western ridge of the glacier's cirque blocking their way to the west. They managed to cross the ridge and then descended and trekked for over ten days, traveling 61 kilometres (38 mi)^[29][30] to get help.^[19] Based on the aircraft's altimeter, they thought they were at 2,100 metres (7,000 ft), when they were actually at about 3,597 metres (11,800 ft). Given the pilot's dying statement that they had overflown Curicó, they estimated they were near the western edge of the Andes and therefore the closest help lay due west. As a result, they only brought along a three-day supply of meat for the three of them.^[28]

Parrado wore three pairs of jeans, three sweaters over a polo shirt and four pairs of socks wrapped in a plastic shopping bag. They had no rock climbing gear, no area map, no compass and certainly no climbing experience. Instead of climbing the somewhat lower ridge to the south, they headed straight up the steep 60 degree slopes of the mountain to the peak.^[31] They estimated they would reach the peak in only a day. Parrado took the lead with the other two often asking him to slow down. The thin oxygen-poor air made climbing difficult. During certain sections of the climb they sank up to their hips in the summer-softened snow.^[19]

Their home-brewed sleeping bag did keep them alive through the frigid nights. In the documentary film Stranded, Canessa described how on the first night they had difficulty finding level ground to place the sleeping bag on. A blizzard blew fiercely and they finally found a rocky ledge at the edge of a cliff level enough for the sleeping bag. Canessa said it was the worst night of his life. The climb was slow and tedious. The survivors at the base camp watched them climb for three long days. On the second day up the mountain Canessa thought he saw a road to the east and tried to persuade Parrado to head in that direction. Parrado disagreed and they were unable to reach an agreement.^[28]

On the third morning after starting out Canessa stayed back at the camp site. Vizintín and Parrado reached the base of a nearly vertical one hundred meter (330 feet) tall wall. The wall was covered with snow and ice. Parrado was determined to hike out or die trying so he used a stick he brought along to carve steps in the ice wall. He made the summit of the 4,650 metres (15,260 ft) high peak before Vizintín. Believing he would see the green valleys of Chile to the west, he was stunned when he was faced with unending snow-capped mountain peaks extending in every direction as far as the eye could see. They had climbed a mountain deep in the Andes on the border between Argentina and Chile and that border was several tens of kilometres from the green valleys of Chile. Vizintín and Parrado descended and rejoined Canessa as the sun set. They sipped cognac from a bottle they had found in the tail section of the aircraft and Parrado said: "Roberto, can you imagine how beautiful this would be if we were not walking dead?"^[31]

They realized their rescue-seeking expedition was going to take much longer than they had anticipated. They were running low on food so Vizintín offered to return to base camp to save the food for the remaining two so they could complete their journey and get help. Vizintín's return was entirely downhill and he used an aircraft seat as a makeshift sleigh to make it back down to base camp within the hour.^[28]

A stunning view

Parrado and Canessa took three hours to climb to the summit. Canessa thought: "We're dead!" when he reached the summit and only saw snow-capped mountains in every direction as far as the eye could see.^[19] But Parrado saw two lower peaks near the western horizon that were clear of snow, with the valley at the foot of their mountain slowly winding its way towards those peaks. Parrado was sure the valley was the way out of the mountains and refused to give up hope. Canessa agreed to go west with him. Only much later did Canessa learn that the road he had seen to the east of the crash would have been an easier trek and would have gotten them rescued sooner.^[31][32]

While on the summit Parrado told Canessa: "We may be walking to our deaths, but I would rather walk to meet my death than wait for it to come to me." Canessa agreed: "You and I are friends, Nando. We have been through so much. Now let's go die together."^[31] They followed the ridge towards the valley for a considerable distance as they descended.

Finding help

Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa (sitting) with Chilean arriero Sergio Catalán

Parrado and Canessa hiked down for seven more days into Chile. They reached the narrow valley that Parrado had seen from the top of the mountain, where they found the source of Río San José, leading to Río Portillo which meets Río Azufre at Los Maitenes. They continued descending along the river and reached the snowline.^[19][28] Gradually they started seeing ever more signs of human life: first, evidence of camping and finally, on the ninth day, some cows.

Canessa was exhausted and unable to keep walking so they rested for the evening. As they gathered wood for a fire, they saw three men on horseback on the other side of the river. Parrado called out to them but the noise of the river made it impossible to communicate. One of the men across the river saw Parrado and Canessa and shouted back: "Tomorrow!" The next day the man returned, scribbled a note, tied the note with a pencil to a stone and threw the stone across the river to Parrado. Parrado replied:^[19][28]

Vengo de un avión que se estrelló en las montañas. Soy uruguayo. Hace 10 días que estamos caminando. Tengo un amigo herido arriba. En el avión quedan 14 personas heridas. Tenemos que salir rápido de aquí y no sabemos cómo. No tenemos comida. Estamos muy débiles. ¿Cuándo nos van a buscar arriba? Por favor, no podemos ni caminar. ¿Dónde estamos?
English: I come from an airplane that crashed in the mountains. I am Uruguayan. We have been walking for 10 days. I have a wounded friend up there. In the plane there are still 14 injured people. We need to get out of here quickly and we don't know how to. We don't have any food. We are very weak. When are you going to come to get us? Please, we can't even walk. Where are we?^[33]

Sergio Catalán, a Chilean arriero, read the note and made signs that he understood. One of the arrieros remembered that several weeks ago an acquaintance had asked if they had heard about the airplane that crashed in the Andes. The arrieros could not imagine that anyone would still be alive. Catalán threw a loaf of bread to the two expeditioners across the river and rode due west for ten hours to get help.^[19][28]

During the trip Catalán ran into another arriero on the south bank of the Azufre river and asked him to ride towards the survivors and take them to the Los Maitenes village. Catalán then followed the river to its junction with the Tinguiririca river, crossed a bridge and followed the narrow route to the holiday resort of Termas del Flaco. There he hailed a truck that took him to the police station at the village of Puente Negro^[19][28] where the police relayed news of the survivors to the Chilean Army command in the village of San Fernando, who in turn contacted Chilean Army headquarters in Santiago.

In the meantime Parrado and Canessa arrived on horseback at Los Maitenes where they were fed and allowed to rest. They had hiked an incredible 61 km (38 mi) under life-threatening conditions in ten days.^[19] Canessa lost half of his body weight and after the plane crash and rescue expedition trek he only weighed 44 kilograms (97 lb).^[34][28]

Helicopter rescue

When the news broke out that survivors had emerged from the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, the story of their 72-day ordeal drew international attention.^[35] A flood of international reporters hiked several kilometers from Puente Negro up to Termas del Flaco. The reporters clamored to interview Parrado and Canessa about the crash and their survival.^[6]

The Chilean Air Force provided three Bell UH-1 helicopters to assist with the rescue. They flew in heavy cloud cover under instrument conditions to Los Maitenes, where the Army interviewed Parrado and Canessa. Once the fog lifted at noon, Parrado guided the helicopters to the crash site in Argentina with the pilot's map he had brought with him. One of the helicopters remained behind as backup. The pilots were astounded at the difficult terrain the two men had crossed to get help.^[6]

The two helicopters arrived at the crash site on the afternoon of 22 December 1972. The steep terrain only permitted the pilot to touch down with a single skid. Due to the altitude and weight limits, the two helicopters were able to take only half of the survivors. Four of the rescuers volunteered to stay behind with the remaining eight survivors for their last night on the mountain.^[6] The second flight of helicopters arrived the following morning at daybreak. The last remaining survivors were rescued on 23 December 1972, more than two and a half months after the crash.^[36] The survivors were taken to hospitals in Santiago for evaluation and were treated for altitude sickness, dehydration, frostbite, broken bones, scurvy and malnutrition.^[6]

Normally the search and rescue team would have also recovered the remains of the dead for burial. However, because recovery would have had to be made from Argentine soil, the Chilean rescuers decided to leave the bodies behind until Argentine authorities decided how to proceed. The Chilean military photographed the bodies and mapped the crash site before returning to Chile.^[2]

Cannibalism sensationalism

The survivors told the press they had managed to stay alive eating cheese and other food items they had brought with them, and after these ran out, local vegetation. They planned to discuss the actual details of how they survived, including their cannibalism, first only with their families. False rumors circulated in Montevideo saying they had killed some of the survivors for food.^[37] On 23 December, news reports of cannibalism were published worldwide, except in Uruguay. On 26 December, two pictures taken by members of Cuerpo de Socorro Andino (Andean Relief Corps) of a half-eaten human leg were printed on the front page of two Chilean newspapers, El Mercurio and La Tercera de la Hora,^[2] who reported that the survivors had resorted to cannibalism to survive.^[38]

The survivors held a press conference on 28 December at the Stella Maris College in Montevideo to tell the story of their 72-day ordeal.^[28] Alfredo Delgado acted as the spokesman for the survivors. He compared their actions to that of Jesus at the Last Supper, during which he gave his disciples the Eucharist.^[14][39] The survivors initially faced a backlash of public opinion, but after they explained the pact the survivors had made amongst themselves to sacrifice their flesh in case of death to help the others survive, the outcry subsided and their families became more understanding.^[21] A Catholic priest heard the survivors' confessions and reassured them they were not going to be damned for cannibalism, given the in extremis nature of their survival situation.^[40] The news of their survival, and the cannibalism they were forced to resort to, drew world-wide attention and developed into a media circus.^[17]

Remains buried at the crash site

The Argentine authorities and the victims' families decided to bury the remains of the victims at the crash site in a common grave. Thirteen bodies were whole while another 15 consisted only of skeletal remains.^[2] Twelve men and a Chilean priest were taken to the crash site on 18 January 1973. Family members were not allowed to attend. They dug a grave 400 to 800 m (1⁄4 to 1⁄2 mi) from the aircraft fuselage at a location they deemed protected from avalanches.^[2] They built a simple stone altar near the grave and placed an orange iron cross on its top. They also made a memorial out of a pile of rocks they gathered and placed a plaque on it with the inscription:^[41]

EL MUNDO A SUS HERMANOS URUGUAYOS
CERCA, OH DIOS DE TI
[English: The world to its Uruguayan brothers
Close, oh God, to you]

They doused the remains of aircraft wreckage with gasoline and set it on fire. Eduardo Strauch later wrote in his book Out of the Silence that the bottom half of the fuselage, covered in snow and thus spared by the fire, was still there when he returned in 1995.^[42]

Ricardo Echavarren, the father of one of the victims, received word from a survivor that his son had wished to be buried at home. Unable to obtain official permission from Argentine authorities to retrieve his son's body, Echavarren hired guides and mounted an illegal expedition of his own. He had arranged with the priest who had buried his son to mark the body bag with his son's remains. Upon returning to the abandoned Hotel Termas El Sosneado, he was arrested for grave robbery. A federal judge and the local mayor interceded to secure his release and Echavarren was later authorized to make funeral arrangements for his son.^[2]

Books

• Blair, Clay Jr. (1973). Survive!. American Heritage Center – Virtual Exhibits. Retrieved 14 October 2012.
• Read, Piers Paul (1974). Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors. Read's book, based on interview of the survivors and their families, was a critical success and remains a highly popular work of non-fiction. Harper published a reprint in 2005, re-titled: Alive: Sixteen Men, Seventy-two Days, and Insurmountable Odds – The Classic Adventure of Survival in the Andes. It includes a revised introduction as well as interviews with Piers Paul Read, Coche Inciarte, and Álvaro Mangino.
• Stephen King (1977). The Shining. King references the crash in his book notoriously set at an isolated hotel in the Rocky Mountains during its harsh winter months. Wendy develops a fear of the hotel's elevator, specifically of being trapped inside with no one else around to save them, and Jack Torrance speculates that "she could see them growing thinner and weaker, starving to death. Or perhaps dining on each other the way those rugby players had."
• Parrado, Nando; Rause, Vince (2006). Miracle in the Andes. Perfection Learning Corporation. ISBN 978-0-7569-8847-0.
• Vierci, Pablo (2008). The Snow Society. Drawing on interviews with each of the 16 survivors 36 years after the crash, journalist and former classmate of many of the survivors Pablo Vierci provides an intimate, collective view of the story in chapters from the perspective of each of the sixteen survivors.
• Canessa, Roberto (2016). I Had to Survive: How a Plane Crash in the Andes Inspired My Calling to Save Lives. In this book, Canessa recalls how the plane crash helped him learn many life lessons about survival, and how his time in the mountains helped renew his motivation to become a doctor.^[56]
• Strauch Urioste, Eduardo; Soriano, Mireya (2019). Out of the Silence: After the Crash. Translated by Erikson, Jennie. ISBN 978-1-5420-4295-6.^[57] Four decades after the tragedy, a climber discovered survivor Eduardo Strauch's wallet near the memorialized crash site and returned it to him, a gesture that compelled Strauch to finally "break the silence of the mountains".
• Guiver, John (2022). To Play the Game: A History of Flight 571. Heddon. ISBN 978-1-913166-69-4. A comprehensive history of the Andes tragedy, appearing fifty years after the event. Retells the story both on and off the mountain, giving an in-depth look at the world from which the passengers came, and an analysis of the possible causes of the accident. The book includes detailed accounts of those who died.

Film and television

• Survive! (1976), also known as Supervivientes de los Andes, is a Mexican feature film production directed by René Cardona, Jr. and based on Blair's book, Survive! (1973)^[58]
• The incident is mentioned in the 1978 survival film Cyclone.
• Alive (1993) is a feature film directed by Frank Marshall, narrated by John Malkovich, and starring Ethan Hawke, based on Read's book Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors. Nando Parrado served as a technical adviser to the film.^[59] Eleven of the survivors visited the set during the production.^[60]
• Alive: 20 Years Later (1993) is a documentary film produced, directed, and written by Jill Fullerton-Smith and narrated by Martin Sheen. It explores the lives of the survivors 20 years after the crash and discusses their participation in the production of Alive: The Miracle of the Andes.
• Stranded (2007), written and directed by Gonzalo Arijón, is a documentary film interlaced with dramatised scenes. All the survivors are interviewed, along with some of their family members and people involved with the rescue operation, and an expedition in which the survivors return to the crash site is documented. The film premiered at the 2007 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, Netherlands and received the Joris Ivens Award.^[61] This film appeared on PBS Independent Lens as "Stranded: The Andes Plane Crash Survivors" in May 2009.^[62]
• "Trapped: Alive in the Andes" (7 November 2007) is a season 1 episode of the National Geographic Channel documentary television series Trapped. The series examines incidents which left survivors trapped in their situation for a period of time.
• I Am Alive: Surviving the Andes Plane Crash (20 October 2010) is a documentary film directed by Brad Osborne that first aired on the History Channel. The film mixed reenactments with interviews with the survivors and members of the original search teams. Also interviewed were Piers Paul Read, renowned mountain climber Ed Viesturs, Andes Survivors expert and alpinist Ricardo Peña, historians, expert pilots, and high-altitude medical experts.
• The incident is mentioned in a 2011 horror film The Divide.
• The Rick and Morty episode "The Vat of Acid Episode" parodies the events of the crash and the subsequent survival efforts. The number 571 can be seen on the side of the plane.
• In the Rocko's Modern Life episode "Tickled Pinky", Rocko is listing several dangerous activities he and Pinky have engaged in. The last item on the list is "flying over The Andes with a Brazilian soccer team".
• The 2021 Bengali web series Robindronath Ekhane Kawkhono Khete Aashenni loosely portrays the incident.
• The incident was the basis for the Showtime series Yellowjackets.
• The incident is mentioned in the HBO limited series Station Eleven. Episode 7, "Goodbye My Damaged Home".
• Prisoners of the Snow, a documentary produced by ABC News Studios. Airdate: 22 May 2023.^[63][64]
• Society of the Snow, a feature film about the incident directed by J. A. Bayona, premiered at the 2023 Venice Film Festival. It is Spain's selection for the Best International Feature Film category at the 2024 Academy Awards.^[65] It premiered on Netflix on 1 January, 2024.

Stage

• The play Sobrevivir a Los Andes (Surviving the Andes) was written by Gabriel Guerrero and premiered on 13 October 2017. Based on the account written by Nando Parrado, it was presented in 2017 at Teatro la Candela in Montevideo, Uruguay and in 2018 at Teatro Regina in Buenos Aires, Argentina.^[66][67][68]
• Miracle Flight 571, composed and created by Lloyd Burritt, is a two-act chamber opera based on the book Miracle in the Andes by Nando Parrado. It received its musical premiere at the 2016 What Next Festival of Music.^[69][70]

Music

• Thomas Dolby's debut LP, The Golden Age of Wireless, contained the instrumental "The Wreck of the Fairchild" (loosely based on the 1972 Uruguayan plane crash) in its first UK edition; this was excised from the first US release but restored on the 2009 remastered collector's edition CD.
• Miracle in the Andes, composed and created by musician Adam Young, is a musical score comprising 10 tracks that tell the story of the Andes flight disaster through song.^[71]
• Punk band GBH included a graphic experience of the passengers on the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 in their song "Passenger on the Menu" (1982).^[72]
• "The Plot Sickens", by the American metalcore band Ice Nine Kills, appears on their 2015 album Every Trick in the Book.^[73]
• The song "Snowcapped Andes Crash" appears on Melody's Echo Chamber's self-titled 2012 album.

In other media

• Sarah Marshall and Blair Braverman chronicled the story in the podcast, You're Wrong About, in October 2022 for its Halloween episode.
• Henry Zebrowski , Marcus Parks, and Ed Larson retold the story in great detail on the Last Podcast on the Left in a three-part series released December 2023.

Books

• Alcalde, Alfonso (1973). Vivir O Morir (1st ed.). ASIN B000W6G6W8.
• Canessa, Roberto (2016). I Had to Survive. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4767-6545-7.
• Parrado, Nando; Rause, Vince (2006). Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home. Perfection Learning Corporation. ISBN 978-0-7569-8847-0.
• Read, Piers Paul (2005). Alive: Sixteen Men, Seventy-two Days, and Insurmountable Odds – The Classic Adventure of Survival in the Andes (Reprint ed.). Harper Collins. ISBN 978-0-380-00321-1.
• Verci, Paulo (2008). La Sociedad de la Nieve: Por Primera Vez Los 16 Sobrevivientes Cuentan la Historia Completa [English: The Snow Society: For the First Time The 16 Survivors Tell the Complete Story]. Editorial Sudamericana. ISBN 978-950-07-2975-8.

Articles

• Dowling, Claudia Glenn (February 1993). "Still Alive". Life. pp. 48–59.