On October 13, 1972, a flight consisting of Uruguayan Amateur Rugby team were travelling to Chile. In total there were 45 people on board, 40 passengers and 5 crew members. They were to be precise travelling from Montevideo, Uruguay to Santiago, Chile. The Plane started its journey on October 12, at first everything was going like a fine wine, but it was going to end up like a rotten banana. This is the Mystery Of Flight 571, what happened on that day, what was the reason for it, well lets dive deep into this heartwarming story.
October 12, the flight started its journey to Chile. This was not going to be a long trip it’s only about 3 hours of air travel. But this is not the thing of interest in this story, there is a range of mountains in the route, the famous Mountains of Andes. The world’s biggest mountain range. It expands about 8900 km and after Himalayas, Andes comes in terms of biggest mountains in the world. And this mountain range is the main villain in our story. On October 12, due to a storm the flight decided to land to avoid any accident. They landed in the Mendoza, Argentina. The next day October 13 the journey to the deadly event started again. They took off at 2:18 PM. The Pilots were convinced that the weather was delightful for the journey. Then after that there was smooth sailing for an hour. At 3:21 PM the pilots started to descend as they were near to Santiago. This descent is the actual reason for the upcoming deadly event. There were a lot of Mountains in that region. The plane faced severe turbulence, but this was a normal ride for the pilots as it was very common to face turbulences during flights. But the disaster started as the plane started to give warning to “Pull Up”. In panic the pilot engaged full throttle and pulled the lever up. But this was too late. The pilots noticed a stone and the tail of the plane strikes the stone and 3 passengers were sucked out and died instantly. After a few minutes the left wing of the plane collides with other part of the mountain and few more people are sucked out of the plane. Now only the front part of the plane was left with passengers and pilots inside. The plane started to go down and then slides on a glacier at the speed of 350 Km/h for a few minutes and after 700 m travel downward, there is a last collision, this time targeting the front of the plane. Everything on the plane was completely destroyed. The pilots instantly died due the front collision. And more people were injured. Now this plane somewhere in the Mountain of Andes at a height of 3570 m. Fortunately, out of 45 passengers and crew members, 33 were still alive, some traumatized and some injured. But unfortunately, they all didn’t knew what was about to come for them.
After the crash, there were two people who weren’t injured the most, Roberto Canessa and Gustavo Zerbino. Both were medical students and immediately started to see people who are injured and want immediate help. They started to help the injured people in every possible way they could. They saw a passenger who got into a comma because of skull fracture. His name was Fernando Parrado. Remember the name of this guy because he plays an important role in this story. Both the medical students start to do arrangements for the injured people hoping that they can survive at least one day in the cold weather. On the other hand after 1 hour of the plane missing, the Chilean Air Search And Rescue Service (SARS) was notified and immediately started to search for the plane. They search for the plane till night but weren’t able to locate it. The problem was that the color of the plane was white and it crashed at a place at which there was white snow everywhere. This made it very hard to locate the plane. Unfortunately, on that night 5 passengers weren’t able to survive and the count for passengers went down from 33 to 28. These people utilized parts of plane to make an inner shelter or sort of a room to make a warm environment for survival. On 14 October, rescue operation from Argentina, Uruguay and Chile were on in-depth search, but weren’t able to found the people. Survivors tried to use lipstick to write SOS on the plane so that the planes can look out for them. But due to shortage of Lipstick they weren’t able to write it. They made a cross with some luggage but soon realized that this all is now getting useless.
On the next they the survivors needed water, therefore one of the survivors Fito Strauch found a solution. He used a metal sheet to concentrate the sunlight to produce enough heat to melt ice and turn it into water. There was very low supplies for the survivors. They had some snacks and some wine bottles. After 3 days the person in the comma, Fernando Parrado wakes up from comma, realizing his mother died and his sister is severly injured. He tried everything to keep her alive but after 8 days she passed away. After 8 days the search team stopped the search operation.
Some survivors found a radio device from the plane. One passenger Roy Harley, rugby player was also a electronic enthusiast. He made the radio working. The problem was that the radio was only one way communicating device meaning that it can only listen to the incoming signal. When they heard the news that the search operation was closed they all were in severe tension that what will they do in order to reach home and survive. They started to ration there supplies. It was at a very high rationing. Parrado ate one chocolate covered peanut for 3 days. But still this rationing was not enough. Therefore they decided to eat the flesh of the dead people there. It was difficult for them at first. The first one to propose this was Canessa and he tried it at first. Later more people started to follow up.
On 29 October, they were hit by another disaster. They encountered an avalanche. This covered every part of the plane. Due to suffocation 8 people died and the count for survivors gets down to 19. Roberto Canessa and Fernando Parrado were the strongest survivors out of all. They all decided to give them more ration of food and clothes therefore they can go out and search for people to help them. The main task was that they need to figure out that where they need to head to search for. They remembered that the pilot instructed that they have passed Curico city. They assumed that if they walked about few kilometers in the west they might be able to reach some city of Chile. But their estimation was very wrong. They were in between the mountains of Andes and Santiago was at their east. But they were unaware of this and rested and got on with the painful journey. They started walking and after some time they discovered the broken end part of the plane. There they found some extra supplies, but the most important thing was that they found a device that can receive and also send signals too. They acquired the help of Roy Harley. But they found out that the batteries of the plane was not enough to turn of the device. So they left it.
On 11 December, they were hit by another avalanche and 3 more people were killed. Now the number of survivors is 16. The decided to go more towards the west and when at the top, they realized their mistake. They were completely wrong about the direction. They saw nothing but mountain. They decided that they have to move no matter what because it was the only way of survival. And finally on 20 December, they found signs of life as cows and animals and also river streams. They were very tired and could walks. They were lucky enough to found some people riding horses. They screamed and caught the attention of one rider. He saw them and said he will come tomorrow. The next day he came with paper and pencil and threw it over the river wrapping it in stone. Parrado wrote for help in Spanish. The person who read the note was farmer of Chile “Sergio Catalan”. He remembered the event that happened 2 month ago. He gave some bread to the injured rode towards the west for 10 hours. They also carried the injured and gave them shelter. Both the survivors travelled 61 Km. Parrado lost half his weight, left with 44 kg. This then became and international news. 3 helicopters saved the rest of the survivors and they were finally given some rest. All the passengers were facing health diseases but all recovered. This heart melting story tells us that whatever we do, we need to keep thriving, this way we will be able to achieve our goal.
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