The Friday 13th Flight on Los Andes Lenyn Lara

Bonfil

The 571 aircraft was supposed to fly from Montevideo, in Uruguay, to Santiago, the Chilean
Capital. The trip should have taken about four hours: these two cities are separated by 930
miles only. Since the trip was not expected to be too long, there were not food supplies on
board. The plane took off eighteen minutes later than the scheduled area. Strong winds blew
that day. Due to the extremely bad weather, the pilot decided to change the flying planned
route and tried to land on Mendoza, Argentina. It October 13 th.

They were flying over an area called Malarge, towards Paso de Planchn, a high peak of
the Andes mountain range which was not visible because of the heavy clouds. The plane
crashed between Mount Tinguiririca and Mount Sosneado, but the recue expedition went off
following a different way.

Eight days had passed without any success for the one hundred and sixty-one rescue
missions; at this point, the government took an awkward decision: to finish the search.
However, the one of the stranded boys father was reluctant to stop looking for them. My son
is alive, he claimed.

After those eight days and because of the wounds received during the crash, the survivors
stated passing away. In an attempt to avoid people continue to die, an expedition was
organized. They departed looking for the rear part of the plane, where they could find food and
medicine. 26 out of the 45 five passengers were still alive. They only were able to find a radio
receiver.

October 24th: As a Gods punishment you will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your
daughters in the siege and anguish to which your enemy shall reduce you. These words,
taken from the Bible were brought up by some of the survivors in order to close the argument
about whether eating or not the dead bodies which were their only possible source of food.
Soon, they were reciting a catholic prayer as a preface to their first cannibal meal; some of
them preferred starving to death though. A few days later, their situation became worse: an
avalanche took the lives of almost a third of them. Gangrene took one more.
Almost two months later, only 17 of them were left. On December 7th, they found the rear part
of the plane and the batteries needed to use the radio transmitter, which remained undamaged
but it broke down as they tried to make it work. A new expedition started looking for help. It was
their last opportunity. They reached a river found a shepherd. 16 of them were still alive.