ALIVE : Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571

Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, also known less formally as the Andes flight disaster, was an airline flight carrying 45 people that crashed in the Andes on October 13, 1972. The event was concluded by December 23, 1972 when the last of 16 survivors were rescued.

The crash and rescue
On Friday the 13th of October, 1972, a Uruguayan Air Force twin turboprop Fairchild FH-227D was flying over the Andes carrying Stella Maris College's "Old Christians" rugby union team from Montevideo, Uruguay to play a match in Santiago, Chile.

The trip had started the day before, October 12, when the Fairchild departed from Carrasco International Airport, but inclement mountain weather forced an overnight stop in Mendoza. After resuming the flight on the afternoon of October 13, the plane was soon flying through a pass in the mountains. The pilot then notified air controllers in Santiago that he was over Curicó, Chile and was cleared to descend. This would prove to be a fatal error. At Fairchild's ceiling of 29,500 feet, the plane could not fly directly from Mendoza, over the Andes, to Santiago. The pilots had to fly south from Mendoza along the Andes, then turn west towards the mountains, fly through the pass, cross the mountains and emerge on the Chilean side of the Andes south of Curico before finally turning north and initiating descent to Santiago after reporting passing Curico. Since the pass was covered by the clouds, the pilots had to rely on the usual time required to cross the pass. However, failing to take into account strong headwinds that ultimately slowed the plane and increased the time required to complete the crossing, the turn and descent was initiated too soon, right into the middle of the mountains. (CFIT)

Dipping into the cloud cover while still over the mountains, the Fairchild soon crashed on an unnamed peak (later called Cerro Seler, also known as Glaciar de las Lágrimas or Glacier of Tears), located between Cerro Sosneado and Volcán Tinguiririca, straddling the remote mountainous border between Chile and Argentina. The plane clipped the peak at 4200 m, neatly severing the right wing, which was thrown back with such a force that it cut off the vertical stabilizer, leaving a gaping hole in the rear of the fuselage. The plane then clipped a second peak which severed the left wing and left the plane as just a fuselage flying through the air. The fuselage hit the ground and slid down a steep mountain slope before finally coming to rest in a snow bank.

Early days
Of the 45 people on the plane, twelve died in the crash or shortly thereafter; another five had died by the next morning, and one more succumbed to injuries on the eighth day. The remaining 26 faced hard survival issues high in the freezing mountains. Many had suffered injuries from the crash including broken legs from the aircraft's seats piling together. The survivors lacked equipment such as cold-weather clothing and footwear suitable for the area, mountaineering goggles to prevent snow blindness (although one of the eventual survivors, 24-year-old Adolfo "Fito" Strauch, devised a couple of sunglasses by using the sun visors in the pilot's cabin which did help protect their eyes from the sun). Most gravely, they lacked any kind of medical supplies, leaving the two freshman medical students on board who had survived the crash to improvise splints and braces with salvaged parts of what remained of the aircraft.


The search
Search parties from three countries looked for the missing plane. However, since the plane was white, it blended in with the snow making it virtually impossible to see from the sky. The search was cancelled after 8 days. The boys had found a small transistor radio on the plane and Roy Harley first heard the news that the search was cancelled on their eleventh day on the mountain. Piers Paul Read in Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors (a text based upon interviews with the survivors) described the moments after this discovery:

"The others who had clustered around Roy, upon hearing the news, began to sob and pray, all except Parrado, who looked calmly up the mountains which rose to the west. Gustavo [Coco] Nicolich came out of the plane 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 which were turned towards 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 plane there was silence. As the hopelessness of their predicament enveloped them, they wept. 'Why the hell is that good news?' Paez shouted angrily at Nicholich. 'Because it means,' [Nicholich] said, 'that we're going to get out of here on our own.' The courage of this one boy prevented a flood of total despair."

Foot and water
The survivors had a small amount of food: a few chocolate bars, other assorted snacks, and several bottles of wine. During the days following the crash they divided out this food in very small amounts so as not to exhaust their meager supply. Fito also devised a way to melt snow into water by using metal from the seats and placing snow on it. The snow then melted in the sun and dripped into empty wine bottles.

Even with this strict rationing, their food stock dwindled quickly. Furthermore, there was no natural vegetation or animals on the snow-covered mountain. The group thus survived by collectively making a decision to eat flesh from the bodies of their dead comrades. This decision was not taken lightly, as most were classmates or close friends. In his 2006 book, Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home, Nando Parrado comments on this decision:

"At high altitude, the body's caloric needs are astronomical ... we were starving in earnest, 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 but aluminium, plastic, ice, and rock."

All of the passengers were Roman Catholic, a point which was emphasized by Piers Paul Read in Alive. According to Read, some equated the act to the ritual of Holy Communion. Others initially had reservations, though after realizing that it was their only means of staying alive, changed their minds a few days later.

Avalanche
Eight of the initial survivors subsequently died on the afternoon of October 29 when an avalanche cascaded down on them as they slept in the fuselage. For three days they survived in an appallingly confined space since the plane was buried under several feet of snow.

Hard decisions
After the avalanche, a few of the boys became insistent that their only means of survival would be to climb over the mountains themselves and search for help. Due to the co-pilot's assertion that the plane had passed Curico, the group assumed that the Chilean countryside was just a few miles away to the west. Several of the healthiest and strongest survivors made excursions in many directions in an attempt to find the plane's tail section and their friends who had fallen from the plane at the point of impact (the bodies of six were found higher up the mountain on one such expedition). Many potential expeditionaries were deterred by the difficulty of hiking at such a high altitude as well as surviving the bitterly cold nights.

After a few trial runs, a final group was formed which included Nando Parrado, Roberto Canessa and Antonio "Tintin" Vizíntin. On Roberto Canessa's insistence, Parrado, and Canessa himself first attempted to travel east, down into the cordillera to find the tail. On this run, they did find the tail of the plane which contained several suitcases. They found scraps of food, a comic book, clothing and cigarettes. Tintin also discovered insulating material wrapped around pipes (which would prove later to be the key to their escape).

Radio
Initially after the crash, an attempt was made to use the cockpit radio to call for help. It was found, however, that the radio had no power running to it. The plane's mechanic had survived the crash (but later died in the avalanche) and mentioned that the Fairchild's batteries were stowed in the missing tail section.

Having finally found the tail, the batteries were also located. However, they were too heavy to transport back to the fuselage. They instead decided to bring the radio to the tail. The boys hiked back up and enlisted the reluctant help of Roy Harley, one of the younger survivors and the closest thing they had to an electronics expert. After several days of tinkering, Harley and Canessa realized that the radio could not be made to work and the team returned to the plane. Unbeknownst to the survivors at the time, the radio did not operate on battery power, but on power generated by the plane's engines.

The sleeping bag
It was now apparent that the only way out was to climb over the mountains to the west. However, they also realized that unless they found a way to survive the freezing temperature of the nights, a trek was impossible. It was at this point that the idea for a sleeping bag was raised.
In his book, Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home, Nando Parrado would comment upon the making of the sleeping bag thirty-four years later:

"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 batts of insulation we'd taken from the tail section gave us our solution....as we brainstormed about the 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 seams together, we could create an insulated sleeping bag large enough for all three expeditionaries to sleep in. With the warmth of three bodies trapped by the insulating cloth, we might be able to weather the coldest nights. Carlitos took on the challenge. His mother had taught him to sew when he was a boy, and with the needles and thread from the sewing kit found in his mother's cosmetic case, he began to work...to speed the progress, Carlitos taught others to sew, and we all took our turns...C, Coche, Gustavo [Zerbino], and Fito turned out to be our best and fastest tailors."

After the sleeping bag was completed and another survivor, Numa Turcatti, died of his injuries, the hesitant Canessa was finally persuaded to set out, and the three expeditionaries took to the mountain on December 12th.

December 12
On December 12, 1972, some two months after the crash, Parrado, Canessa and Vizintín began their trek up the mountain. Parrado took the lead, and often had to be called to slow down, although the trek up the hill against gravity and in low-oxygen was difficult for all of them. Although it was still bitterly cold, the sleeping bag allowed them to live through the nights.

On the third day of the trek, Parrado reached the top of the mountain before the other two expeditionaries. What he saw literally took his breath away. Stretched before him as far as the eye could see were more mountains. Spying a small "Y" in the distance, he gauged that a way out of the mountains must lay beyond, and refused to give up hope. Knowing that the hike would take more energy than they'd originally planned for, Parrado and Canessa sent Vizintín back to the crash site, as they were rapidly running out of rations. Since the return was entirely downhill, it only took him one hour to get back to the fuselage on a sled made from broken parts of the plane.

Rescue and return
Parrado and Canessa hiked for several more days, reaching the end of the snowline. On the ninth evening Parrado and Canessa set down to rest. As Parrado was gathering wood to build a fire, Canessa noticed what looked like a man on a horse at the other side of the river, and yelled at the near-sighted Parrado to run down to the banks. At first it seemed that Canessa had been imagining the man on the horse, but eventually they saw three men on horseback. Divided by a river, Nando and Canessa tried to convey their situation to which one of them, a Chilean Huaso named Sergio Catalan, shouted "tomorrow." They knew at this point they would be saved and settled to sleep by the river. The next day the men returned and tied paper to a rock and pencil which they threw to the boys. Parrado wrote a note telling them about the plane crash and threw it back to them. Catalan rode on horseback for many hours to bring help and eventually a rescue team with helicopters appeared. Nando was recruited to fly back to the mountain in order to guide the helicopters to the remaining survivors. The news that people had survived the October 13 crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 had also leaked to the international press and a flood of reporters also began to appear.

The mountain rescue
The following day, those remaining at the crash site heard on their radio that Parrado and Canessa had been successful in finding help and that afternoon, December 22, 1972, a helicopter carrying Parrado and two search and rescue climbers arrived, taking half of the survivors. It departed, leaving the Andinists and remaining survivors at the crash site until the second helicopter could arrive. Leaving was again delayed until the following morning due to the hazards of flying into the Andes at night, leaving those left behind to once again sleep in the fuselage. The second helicopter arrived at daybreak on December 23, and with that, all sixteen survivors were rescued. All of the survivors were taken to hospitals in Santiago and treated for altitude sickness, dehydration, frostbite, broken bones, scurvy and malnutrition.

Aftermatch
When first rescued, the survivors initially explained that they had eaten some cheese they had carried with them, planning to discuss the details in private with their families. However, they were pushed into the public eye when photos were leaked to the press and sensational, unauthorized articles were published.

The survivors held a press conference on December 28 at Stella Maris College, where they recounted the events of the past 72 days (over the years, they would also participate in the publication of two books, two films, and an official website about the event).
The rescuers later returned to the crash site and buried the bodies of the deceased under a pile of stones a half mile from the site. The grave was commemorated by an iron cross erected from the center of the stone pile. What remained of the fuselage was incinerated to thwart curiosity seekers.