How Flight 571 Survivors Endured 72 Days
On Friday, October 13, 1972, a small twin-engine plane carrying 45 people disappeared into the jagged spine of the Andes Mountains. Seventy-two days later, sixteen ragged, frostbitten young men walked out of the wilderness alive. What happened in between is one of the greatest survival stories ever told.
Via ABC News
Their struggle began the moment the plane shattered against the remote glacier. With no rescue in sight and temperatures plunging below freezing each night, the survivors were forced to confront hunger, injury, and the brutal realities of high-altitude life. Every decision became a test of endurance, pushing them far beyond anything they had ever imagined.
The Team and the Flight
The Old Christians Club was an amateur rugby team from a Catholic high school in Montevideo, Uruguay. In October 1972, they were headed to Santiago, Chile, for a friendly match. To make the trip affordable, players invited family members and friends to join. Forty passengers, mostly young men in their late teens and early twenties, boarded Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 along with five crew members.
Via The Guardian
The aircraft was a Fairchild FH-227D, a sturdy turboprop often used in the mountains, but it had one major limitation: it could not safely climb above 22,500 feet for long. On October 12, bad weather forced the plane to land in Mendoza, Argentina. The team spent the night playing cards and joking in a small hotel. The next afternoon, Friday the 13th, they took off again at 2:18 p.m. under clearing skies.
The pilots chose a southern route through the Planchón Pass, where the Andes drop lower. About an hour into the flight, the co-pilot radioed air traffic control that they had passed Curicó, Chile, and were beginning their descent into Santiago. It was a fatal mistake. Clouds had hidden the peaks, and the plane was still more than 40 miles inside Argentina, surrounded by mountains that towered over 20,000 feet.
Via National Geographic
At 3:34 p.m., the Fairchild clipped a ridge. The right wing tore off, slicing through the fuselage like a knife. Seconds later, the left wing broke away. The tail section ripped free. What remained, the fuselage with 45 terrified people inside, slid down a glacier at nearly 200 miles per hour before grinding to a stop in deep snow at 11,700 feet.
The First Night
Night fell quickly in the valley. Temperatures dropped to −22 °F (−30 °C). The survivors pulled seats from the plane to make a rough wall against the wind. They used luggage and pieces of metal to block the gaping holes where the wings had been.
Via ABC News
The injured lay on the floor while others huddled together for warmth. They had almost no food: eight chocolate bars, a few packets of crackers, three small jars of jam, some candy, and a couple of bottles of wine. It was enough for perhaps two or three days if carefully rationed.
The Search Is Called Off
For the first week, rescue planes flew overhead almost daily. The survivors waved shirts, spelled out SOS in the snow with luggage, and screamed until their voices gave out. But the white fuselage was nearly invisible against the snow, and the search planes never spotted them.
Via History
On day ten, a small battery radio picked up a news bulletin: the official search had been abandoned. Everyone on board was presumed dead. The young men sat in stunned silence. They were on their own.
Hunger Becomes the Enemy
By the end of the first week, the tiny food supplies were gone. The survivors were burning thousands of calories a day just to stay warm. Their bodies began to waste away. Some began to talk about what had once been unthinkable. Many of the boys had grown up Catholic and remembered the Eucharist, Jesus offering his body and blood for others.
Via Alpine Expeditions
One night, Roberto Canessa, a 19-year-old medical student, spoke openly: “If Jesus gave his flesh for us at the Last Supper, then maybe this is the same.” After long, tear-filled discussions, they agreed. When the next person died, they would use the body to stay alive. It was not an easy decision. Many cried while cutting the first thin strips of flesh.
Avalanche
On October 29, day 17, disaster struck again. In the middle of the night, an avalanche roared down the mountain and buried the fuselage under twenty feet of snow. Eight more people died instantly, suffocated before they could even wake up.
Via Irish Examiner
The remaining nineteen spent three days digging a breathing hole with a metal pole before finally breaking through the roof. For the next week, they lived inside a freezing cave of snow. The air was thick with the smell of death. Hope was almost gone.
The Decision to Walk Out
By early December, only sixteen people remained alive. They knew no one was coming. If they stayed, they would all die. Three of the strongest, Nando Parrado, Roberto Canessa, and Antonio “Tintín” Vizintín, volunteered to climb out and find help. They spent days preparing. They sewed together pieces of insulation from the plane to make a sleeping bag big enough for three.
Via New York Post
They turned seat cushions into snowshoes. They melted snow for water and rationed the last bits of human flesh. On December 12, the three men said goodbye to their friends and began climbing the mountain wall that rose straight up from the crash site. No one knew what lay on the other side.
Ten Days Across Hell
The climb was brutal. The slope was almost vertical in places. They used a broken piece of metal as an ice axe and tied themselves together with seatbelts. After three days, they reached the summit, over 15,000 feet, and looked west. Instead of green valleys, they saw only more endless white peaks. Their hearts sank. Tintín Vizintín volunteered to turn back so the remaining food could last longer for two.
Via Good Morning America
He slid down the glacier on a piece of metal in less than an hour, a trip that had taken three days to climb. Parrado and Canessa pressed on. They walked for ten days, sometimes covering only a mile or two. They slept in shallow snow holes. Their lips cracked and bled. Their feet were raw. Frostbite blackened their fingers and toes.
Contact
The river was too wide and fast to cross. The noise drowned out their shouts. Parrado tore a page from a notebook, wrote in lipstick: “I come from a plane that crashed in the mountains…” He wrapped it around a rock with a red shoestring and threw it across. The Chilean mule driver, Sergio Catalán, read the note and rode ten hours through the night to alert authorities.
Via National Geographic
On December 22, two Chilean Air Force helicopters battled fierce winds to reach the crash site. Only six survivors could be taken out that day because of weight limits and bad weather. The remaining eight spent one last night in the fuselage they had lived in for 72 days. The next morning, December 23, the helicopters returned. As the final survivors climbed aboard, they looked back at the Valley of Tears one last time. Then they flew toward life.
The World Reacts
When the story broke, the world was stunned, not just by the length of the ordeal but by the revelation that the survivors had eaten the dead. Newspapers screamed headlines. Some called it barbaric. Others called it heroic.
Via TV Guide
The survivors faced the cameras with quiet dignity. They explained their religious reasoning. The Catholic Church quickly declared that they had not sinned; they had done what was necessary to live. Public opinion shifted almost overnight. They were not monsters; they were miracles.
Life After the Mountain
The sixteen men came home to a changed world. Many became doctors, lawyers, farmers, businessmen, and writers. Nando Parrado became an international motivational speaker. Roberto Canessa became a respected pediatric cardiologist. Almost all were married and had children. Every December 22, they gather with their families to celebrate the day they were reborn.
Via UNILAD
They have returned to the mountain many times. In 2006, they placed a memorial, a black iron cross and a plaque with the names of the 29 who never came home, at the crash site. The wreckage still lies there, slowly disappearing under new snow each year.
What Made Them Survive?
People still ask how sixteen young men, most barely out of their teens, managed to endure what trained mountaineers would have found impossible. They point to many things: the strength they drew from friendship and rugby teamwork, the leadership of men like Marcelo Pérez and Nando Parrado, the medical knowledge of Roberto Canessa and Gustavo Zerbino, the unshakable faith of many, and the simple refusal to die while others still needed them.
Via Big Tex Injury Lawyers
But above all, they survived because of love. They took care of one another. They shared the last sip of water, the last piece of flesh. They carried the injured. They told jokes in the dark. They promised each other they would all get out, or none would.
Explore the Story of Flight 571 Survivors
The crash site is still remote and dangerous. Only experienced climbers reach it today. Snow and ice have almost buried the fuselage. The memorial cross stands alone against the vast white silence. Every few years, some of the sixteen return. They stand quietly, remembering friends who stayed behind.
Via Rare Historical Photos
They touch the snow that once nearly killed them. Then they walk back down to their families and the lives they were given a second time. Seventy-two days on a glacier. Sixteen men who refused to surrender. Twenty-nine who gave everything so the others could live. That is the Miracle of the Andes.
