Fifty-four years later, and we're still talking about it. Most people think they know the story of the 1972 Andes plane crash. They know about the mountains, the cold, and the "cannibalism." But honestly? That last part—the part the tabloids obsessed over for decades—is probably the least interesting thing about what actually happened on that glacier. When Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 clipped a ridge and slammed into the Valley of Tears on October 13, 1972, it didn't just start a survival story. It started a 72-day psychological experiment that shouldn't have been possible to survive.
It was a Friday.
The Fairchild FH-227D was carrying the Old Christians Club rugby team from Montevideo to Santiago, Chile. There were 45 people on board, including family and friends. Because of the weather, they’d already had to stop overnight in Mendoza, Argentina. When they finally took off again, the pilots made a fatal navigational error. They thought they had passed Curicó, Chile, and started their descent. They hadn't. They were still deep in the heart of the Andes. When the plane emerged from the clouds, it wasn't facing an airport; it was facing a wall of black rock.
What the movies get wrong about the 1972 Andes plane crash
Most dramatizations, even the good ones like Society of the Snow or the 90s classic Alive, have to compress time. They make it look like the crash was the hard part. It wasn't. The crash was instantaneous. The tail broke off. The engines stayed behind. The fuselage slid down a mountain slope like a high-speed toboggan before hitting a snowbank. Twelve people died in the initial impact or shortly after. But for the 33 survivors, that was just the preamble to a much slower, much more terrifying ordeal.
Think about the environment. They were at an altitude of roughly 11,500 feet. At that height, the air is thin, and the sun is blinding. By night, the temperature would drop to -30°C. They were wearing sports coats and cotton shirts. No heavy coats. No mountain gear. No way to call for help because the radio was smashed.
The silence of the search
On the eleventh day, they heard it on a small transistor radio they’d managed to scavenge. The search had been called off.
Imagine that for a second. You’re huddled in a broken tube of aluminum, starving, freezing, and you hear a voice on the radio say you’re officially dead. Most people would have given up right then. In fact, many did lose hope. But it was this specific moment that shifted the group’s mindset from "waiting to be saved" to "saving ourselves." It’s a nuance of the 1972 Andes plane crash that survivors like Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa talk about often. Once the world abandoned them, they became a sovereign nation of survivors with their own rules.
The logistics of the unthinkable
We have to talk about the food. It’s what everyone asks about, even if they’re too polite to say it. By day ten, they were eating crumbs. They tried to eat the leather from the seats, but the chemicals made them sick. They tried to eat the straw stuffing in the cushions.
💡 You might also like: Why Daniel Wright Woods Forest Preserve is Still the Best Escape in Lake County
The decision to consume the bodies of their dead friends wasn't a "Lord of the Flies" moment. It was a somber, clinical, and deeply spiritual discussion. These were devout Catholics. They compared the act to the Eucharist—a way for their friends to help them live. Roberto Canessa, who was a medical student at the time, had to lead this because he understood the biological necessity of protein in that environment. Without it, their bodies were literally consuming their own heart muscles to stay alive.
But then, the mountain hit them again. On October 29, an avalanche buried the fuselage while they were sleeping inside. It killed eight more people. For three days, the survivors were trapped in a tiny, oxygen-deprived space under the snow, literally living on top of the bodies of the people who had just died next to them. If you’re looking for the moment that truly tested the human spirit during the 1972 Andes plane crash, it wasn't the starvation—it was those three days under the snow.
The trek that changed history
By December, only 16 were left. They knew no one was coming. They knew they’d die there if they stayed.
Nando Parrado, Roberto Canessa, and Vizintín set out to climb the mountain to the west. They thought they were on the edge of Chile. They weren't. When Parrado finally reached the summit of the 15,000-foot peak, he didn't see green valleys. He saw more mountains. Thousands of them. It was a death sentence, but Parrado famously told Canessa that he’d rather die walking toward the sun than waiting in the fuselage.
Vizintín gave his rations to the other two and headed back to the plane so they’d have more food. For ten days, Parrado and Canessa walked. They had no gear. They used a sleeping bag they’d sewn together from plane insulation. They walked until the snow turned to dirt and the dirt turned to grass.
Meeting Sergio Catalán
The end of the 1972 Andes plane crash saga didn't happen with a high-tech rescue mission. It happened with a piece of paper and a rock. On December 21, they spotted a Chilean arriero (muleteer) named Sergio Catalán on the other side of a rushing river. He couldn't hear them over the water. He threw a rock wrapped in paper across the river.
Parrado wrote: "I come from a plane that fell in the mountains. I am Uruguayan. We have been walking for ten days... In the plane there are 14 people injured. We have to get out of here quickly and we don't know how. We have no food. We are weak. When are you going to fetch us? Please, we cannot even walk. Where are we?"
👉 See also: Weather in Montego Bay Jamaica: What Most People Get Wrong
Catalán threw a piece of bread across the river. He rode his horse for ten hours to get help. That bread, according to Canessa, was the best thing he had ever tasted in his life.
Why this story persists in 2026
We live in a world that feels increasingly fragile. We’re obsessed with "resilience" and "grit." The survivors of the 1972 Andes plane crash are the ultimate case study in those traits. They didn't survive because they were super-soldiers; they survived because they were a team. They organized. They had "inventors" who made water-melters out of aluminum. They had "doctors" who tended to wounds with no medicine. They had a "tailor" who made clothes for the trek.
It’s a story about the boundaries of human ethics. When the survivors were rescued, there was a brief, ugly period of media backlash regarding how they survived. But the families of those who died largely supported them. They understood that in the Valley of Tears, the normal rules of the world didn't apply.
Lessons from the Valley of Tears
If you’re looking for a way to apply the lessons of the 1972 Andes plane crash to your own life—hopefully in a much less dire context—here is how the survivors actually managed their mindset:
- Break the big goal into tiny pieces. Parrado didn't think about the 40 miles he had to walk. He thought about the next ten steps. Then the next ten.
- Accept your reality immediately. The survivors who died first were often those who could not accept that the plane had crashed and that they weren't going home for dinner. The ones who lived were the ones who looked at the snow and said, "This is my home now. How do I fix it?"
- The "We" is stronger than the "I." There was no room for ego. If someone was too weak to move, others massaged their legs for hours. They shared the warmth of their bodies. Survival was a collective effort, not a solo competition.
If you want to dive deeper into the technical aspects of the crash or the psychological impact on the survivors, I recommend reading La Sociedad de la Nieve by Pablo Vierci. It’s perhaps the most raw account available, featuring interviews from all 16 survivors. You can also visit the Museo Andes 1972 in Montevideo, Uruguay, which houses artifacts from the site and serves as a somber memorial to the 29 who didn't come home.
The site of the crash itself is still a pilgrimage for some. Every year, expeditions go to the Valley of Tears. The fuselage is gone—pushed down into the glacier or buried deep—but the memorial cross remains. It stands as a reminder that even in the most desolate places on Earth, the human will to live is the one thing that can't be frozen out.