Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors

On October 13, 1972, a Fairchild F-227 carrying forty-five people—including an amateur rugby team from Uruguay, their friends, and family—departed Mendoza, Argentina, bound for Santiago, Chile. At 3:30 p.m., the pilot reported an altitude of 15,000 feet. One minute later, the Santiago control tower lost contact with the aircraft. Despite an eight-day search by Chilean, Uruguayan, and Argentinian teams, heavy snowfall in the Andes made locating wreckage unlikely. Ten weeks later, a Chilean peasant spotted two haggard men gesturing from across a river. The note they returned read: "I come from a plane that fell in the mountains . . ." Sixteen passengers survived the crash. Sheltering in the plane's fuselage in a remote glacial wilderness, they endured freezing temperatures, severe injuries, an avalanche, and starvation. When their food supplies dwindled and a patched-together radio confirmed that search efforts had ceased, hope seemed gone. Facing imminent death, the survivors confronted an impossible choice: whether to consume the flesh of their deceased companions to survive. This account documents their struggle with endurance, determination, friendship, and the human spirit in extreme circumstances.