On October 13, 1972, a chartered plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team crashed high in the remote Andes mountains. The astonishing 72-day saga of the survivors who defied death against all odds became known as the “Miracle in the Andes.”
A Fateful Flight
On October 12th, a Fairchild FH-227 chartered by the Uruguayan Air Force departed Montevideo for Santiago, Chile carrying 40 passengers and 5 crew members. The passengers were mainly young men, members of the Old Christians Club rugby team, along with 10 friends and family members who had tagged along.
The trip was supposed to take only a few hours. But bad weather forced the plane to stop overnight in Mendoza, Argentina. The next day, the plane took off just after 2 PM into clear skies. As the aircraft began its descent toward Santiago two hours later, it encountered turbulence and clouds.
Suddenly, the plane’s right wing struck a mountain at over 350 mph. The impact sheared off the aircraft’s tail and wings, sending wreckage flying across the snowy slopes. As the destroyed fuselage slid down the mountain, seats were ripped from their moorings, flinging passengers to their deaths.
When the wreckage finally came to rest at 11,800 feet, 12 passengers had been killed on impact or ejected into the mountains. Scattered across the remote snowy peaks, the plane’s remains would be nearly impossible for searchers to spot from the air.
