Uruguayan Rugby team – 72 days in the Andes
Time stranded: 72 days
Distance traveled: Under 5 miles
Terrain types: Mountain, extreme cold
Deaths: 29
Situation ended: Rescued by search team
Location: Andes Mountains, Chile
This is one survival story that’s had several books and even a movie based on it, and not for good reasons either. Out of the 45 people on the flight, only a total of 16 were rescued in the end after what turned out to be a living nightmare.
Flight 571 was traveling from Uruguay to Santiago in Chile, carrying 45 people made up of members of the country’s rugby team and some of their friends and family.
While crossing the Andes the pilot, who was new to the job and didn’t know the area, thought they were approaching Curicó in Chile, even though the instruments said otherwise. He changed the course of the plane to head towards what he believed to be Pudahuel airport and started to slowly reduce altitude.
There is often thick cloud that hangs around the Andes mountain range which obscures the pilot’s view of anything on the ground, but he continued downwards as he thought best. This ended with the plane suddenly coming out of a cloud and heading right into the mountain. Not having time to correct his mistake the pilot crashed the plane on the mountainside, which saw the rear half of the body and both wings smash off on impact.
The rear half of the plane came to a stop quite quickly but the front half slid down the side of the mountain for some distance, acting as a massive toboggan before coming to a stop after crashing into some trees.
Out of the 45 people on board 17 died in the initial impact, including everyone in the rear half which snapped off on contact with the ground. Some of the 28 other survivors in the front half had serious injuries, and several died over the next day.
Since they were at the top of a mountain without supplies and no one had any gear to travel through the frozen landscape they decided the best thing to do would be to stay put and wait for rescue.
The group had a small amount of food they brought on as hand luggage but this quickly disappeared. They also managed to save a radio that they could use to listen in on rescue attempts being broadcast, though they didn’t have the capability to transmit a message to anyone.
10 days after the crash the group heard on their radio that all rescue attempts had been called off, and with no one coming to get them and food already long run out, any morale within the group instantly disappeared.
Sitting in the front half of the plane they were using as a shelter, the group talked and decided that if any of them should die, the others had their permission to eat them if need be.
Surely enough over the next few days, one of the group died, with the others being forced to eat him which gave strength to the other weak members of the group who otherwise may not have made it.
17 days after the crash the group was all sitting in their shelter when a sudden avalanche flooded into the plane and buried 8 of them alive, which the other members of the group were unable to do anything about in time.
60 days after the crash the group decided that no one was ever going to come while they were still alive, and so sent out 2 of the strongest members of the group to find help.
These 2 men trekked for 38 miles over the next 10 days, crossing the peak of the next mountain blocking their view to the west and on to flatter land where they hoped to find a village.
They eventually ran into a man who lived alone in a very remote location, but he was able to give them food and then rode for 10 hours to the nearest town to alert the authorities. The rest of the group, of which there were 16 were all rescued alive on December 23, 1972, after having spent 72 days on top of the Andes mountains in half a plane.