1972 Andes flight disaster

Uruguayan Flight 571

The Fairchild FH-227D, with Flight 571's Fuerza Aérea Uruguaya livery, used in the 1993 movie Alive.
Accident summary
Date	13 October 1972 – 23 December 1972
Summary	Controlled flight into terrain due to pilot error, 72-day survival
Site	Remote mountainous Malargüe Department, Mendoza Province, Argentina, near to the border with Chile (1200 mts) 34°45′54″S 70°17′11″W / 34.76500°S 70.28639°W / -34.76500; -70.28639Coordinates: 34°45′54″S 70°17′11″W / 34.76500°S 70.28639°W / -34.76500; -70.28639
Crew	5
Fatalities	29 (not all due to crash; see Passengers and Crew sections below)
Survivors	16
Aircraft type	Fairchild FH-227D
Operator	Uruguayan Air Force
Flight origin	Carrasco International Airport Montevideo, Uruguay
Stopover	Mendoza International Airport
Destination	Pudahuel Airport Santiago, Chile

Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 was a chartered flight carrying 45 people, including a rugby union team, their friends, family and associates, that crashed in the Andes on 13 October 1972, in an incident known as the Andes flight disaster and, in the Hispanic world and South America, as the Miracle of the Andes (El Milagro de los Andes). More than a quarter of the passengers died in the crash and several others quickly succumbed to cold and injury. Of the 27 who were alive a few days after the accident, another eight were killed by an avalanche that swept over their shelter in the wreckage. The last 16 survivors were rescued on 23 December 1972, more than two months after the crash.

The survivors had little food and no source of heat in the harsh conditions at over 3,600 metres (11,800 ft) altitude. Faced with starvation and radio news reports that the search for them had been abandoned, the survivors fed on the bodies of dead passengers that had been preserved in the snow. Rescuers did not learn of the survivors until 72 days after the crash when passengers Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa, after a 10-day trek across the Andes, found Chilean arriero Sergio Catalán, who gave them food and then alerted the authorities to the existence of the other survivors.

On 13 October 1972, a chartered Uruguayan Air Force twin turboprop Fairchild FH-227D was flying over the Andes carrying the Old Christians Club rugby union team from Montevideo, Uruguay, to play a match in Santiago, Chile. The trip had begun the day before when the Fairchild departed from Carrasco International Airport, but inclement mountain weather forced an overnight stop in Mendoza, Argentina. At the Fairchild's ceiling of 9,000 metres (30,000 ft), the aircraft could not fly directly from Mendoza, over the Andes, to Santiago, in large part because of the weather. Instead, the pilots had to fly south from Mendoza parallel to the Andes, then turn west towards the mountains, fly through a low pass (Planchon), cross the mountains and emerge on the Chilean side of the Andes south of Curicó before finally turning north and initiating descent into Santiago.