How Did the Plane Crash?
52 years ago, at this very point of the world’s longest mountain range, a plane collided head-on with the mountain. The surprising thing was that the plane immediately disappeared somewhere after the collision. This is the 8900 km long Andes Mountain Range of South America. Where there are 15000 feet high mountains and nothing is found except unbearable cold and silence.
When neither the wreckage of the ship nor any dead bodies were found for several days, it became clear to the authorities that there would be no passengers left, so they searched. Announced closure of the operation. Talks about the plane crash continued in the news media for the next few days and after that, everything slowly started getting back to normal. People had now forgotten this accident but after about two and a half months of this accident. Exactly 72 two days later, the authorities received a message from the missing plane. In the articles of viksolve.com, once again the happy Nazarene.
It was the Euro Guy Air Force flight 571 which, by performing a miracle in real life, will remain forever in the history. My name is written forever. On 12th October 1972, this flight takes off from Montearticle, the capital of Yuru Guayas. There were rugby players on board who had to go from Montearticle to Chile’s capital Santiago to play a match.
A total of 40 passengers in the plane including rugby players and Five crew members were present. After take-off, the plane had just reached Argentina when due to sudden bad weather, they had to land in the Argentinian city of Mendos. The captain took this decision because the world’s capital between Argentina and Chile.
The highest Andes mountain range stands like a wall. The high mountains here are quite dangerous and passing over them in bad weather was not without danger. The pilot’s plan was to spend one night in Mendoza and then the next day the weather would be fine.
The Andes mountains were to be crossed, but how did the pilot and all the passengers know what trouble was going to befall them the next day i.e. Friday, October 13, flight 571 took off from Mendoza. If seen on the map, it was Mendoza. And their destination is only 180 km distance between Santiago but in these 180 km there are only 15000 feet high peaks of Andes, hence the planned route of the flight was such that first the plane will go to the south of Mendoza, gain its height and then the plane After reaching Chon Pass, it will turn towards the Andes and cross these dangerous mountains and then turn towards the Chilean city of Curcova and land directly on Santiago.
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The pilot of Flight 571 had completed about 50 flights on this route, so he was automatically But there was a lot of confidence. As soon as the plane took off from Mendoze, it headed towards the south as per the plan. While the plane was gaining height, the pilot noticed that a thick layer of clouds had hidden the entire scene below. Now the pilot was in this condition. It has connected with the control tower which will keep the pilot informed about his location through radio after seeing the radar. Apart from the control tower, pilots can also estimate their location in another way. In this, the speed of the aircraft is kept in view of the last known location of the aircraft. By calculating your current location, you can estimate your current location.
This method is called dead racking in aviation language. As soon as flight 571 reached parallel to Plancher Pass, it took a right turn. Now it is in the Andes at an altitude of 18000 feet. They were passing over the mountains, with blue sky above and white clouds below. The pilot was completely dependent on the Santiago Air Traffic Control Tower. As soon as they approached Plazon Pass, Flight 571 disappeared from the control tower’s radar.
This is a normal thing. Because the radar signals were very weak due to the mountains, on this occasion the copilot calculated our location through dead reckoning and radioed the Santiago control tower on 3:2 meters that after 1 minute we reached the city of Cusco, Chile. Now normally the plane takes 11 minutes to reach Curico from Planchon Pass, but they had covered this distance in just three minutes.
This thing did not make sense to the staff sitting in the control tower. It did not come, but because Flight 571 was not showing on the radar, they gave permission to descend the aircraft, but they had no idea that the copilot had actually calculated the location of the plane. She was wrong. The pilot thought he was over Koriko but in reality the planes were crossing Chon Pass at that time.
A huge disaster was waiting for Flight 571. As soon as permission was received from the control tower, the pilot made a right turn and the plane. They also started reducing the height. Initially, they were facing dangerous turbulators. When they crossed the layer of white clouds, what they saw was that a huge mountain was standing in front of them. Yes, at this point the pilot realized that in reality he was still in the Andes.
The pilot tried his best to gain altitude again. The nose of the plane was now towards the sky but regretfully, perhaps this could have been done a little earlier. The tail of Flight 571 hit the top of the mountain and separated from the plane. At this time, this mountain was completely covered with snow, without tail and wings, the fuse of Fala 571 came straight downwards, sliding in the snow and stopped at this point. Due to the crash, 12 passengers died on the spot.
They were gone, especially those people who were present in the rear part of the plane. Generally, the lives of 33 passengers were saved due to the fuse lock of the plane, but they suffered a lot of injuries. Due to the separation of the tail, the back part of the plane was opened. At this time, they were stuck in the Andes at an altitude of 11500 feet, where the temperature was -30 degrees Celsius. As soon as they came out, as far as they could see, they could only see snow covered mountains.
The first thing he did was to bury the bodies of his companions in the snow. The news of the plane crash had alerted the Chilean authorities but they did not know that it had actually crashed in Argentina. Without wasting any time, they searched for him. Started the operation in which four airplanes took part. While searching the suspected area from morning till evening, they neither saw any plane nor any debris.
It was a very difficult search operation because all the mountains below were covered with snow. Euro Guy and Argentina also took part in this search operation and now a total of 11 aircraft spent the whole day searching for Flight 571. Rescue planes passed several times over the passengers remaining on the crash side, but Despite all his efforts, the rescue planes could not catch sight of him. Later, he found lipstick in one of the luggage, with which he wrote a big SOS on the fuse lock of the plane.
He also made a cross on the snow with the luggage bag, but the rescue planes Still, they could not be seen. After running the search operation for a total of six days, the search operation was ended on 21 October 1972 by declaring all the passengers dead. On the 11th day, the passengers present at the crash site found a radio in the cockpit itself which was tuned to When they heard the news that the search operation to find them had now been called off, where they were already in so much trouble, this news left them with great regret; what seemed to be their last hope for survival was gone.
In the first week itself, five more passengers lost their lives due to injuries. Now only 28 passengers were left at the crash site. They collected the debris and luggage of the plane and switched off the fuse of the plane to save themselves from the cold. As far as he could, he cut off the plastic visor of the cockpit and made glasses for himself, which provided some protection from the light reflected from the snow, heated the seat covers and made snow shoes from the seat cushions.
There were eight chocolate bars, three jam jars, some dry fruits and a few bottles of water. For the first week, they ate this food with great difficulty by dividing it among themselves, but when all these things were finished, they started eating clothes and cotton. Due to which Majid started falling ill. He could not find anything for energy in this part of the Andes and on top of that, it was neither possible to descend from the ridge on which he had crashed nor to hike upwards during this period.
The condition of the passengers was such that their body weight had reduced to 40, finally when they could not understand anything, they started eating the body parts of their dead companions. Obviously this decision was very difficult but hunger, thirst and weakness They were forced to take this step. On October 29, 17 days after the crash, suddenly an avalanche came at night and attacked the fuse box badly.
The speed of the avalanche was so high that the entire fuse box was filled with snow from inside. Nine survivors were killed in this accident. The remaining 19 people used whatever they got to remove the snow and make space for oxygen. As the days passed, the condition of the survivors was getting worse. One by one, all of them were facing death. And the survivors were waiting for their death. Till December 12, i.e. 60 days after the crash, three more survivors lost the battle of life.
Now the 16 people left behind had only two options. Here they were counting their remaining days. Start or dare to hike this vertical cliff to the west. On December 12, 1972, three rugby players, Parrado Kanisa and Vijen Teen, set out to hike Western Peak in the hope that the other side of the mountain would be green.
It was a very painful hike as they did not have professional gears and on top of that the temperature was -30°C. They had to make do with hand-made sleeping bags and warmers made from ship seats. Wrapped their clothes and set out on a hike. After hiking continuously for 3 days, when they finally reached the top of the mountain, they saw that on the other side of the mountain there were similar snow covered mountains.
Here too there was neither greenery nor Due to shortage of food, one person went back to the crash site. Parado and Kanisa went downhill on the other side of the mountain in search of help. After trekking for the next 10 days and traveling 61 km in bad condition After that finally they reached a valley where there was greenery, there were animals and the river was also flowing.
First of all they drank water from the river and then they saw a man on a horse on the other side of the river. Due to the noise of the river, he could convey his message to that person. Unable to reach the person, the local sitting on the horse got an idea and wrapped a paper and a pen in a stone and threw it across the river. Pardo and Kanisa wrote the whole story on that paper and threw it back.
The person chased away the horse. This letter was taken to the Chilean authorities. At first they could not believe that even after two and a half months, how could the survivors of a plane crash be still alive, but the authorities immediately rescued Parrado and Kanisa and after dressing them, Took a detailed interview with him. On 27 December 1972, i.e. 72 days after the crash, three heli helicopters on the instructions of Parado and Kanisa reached the crash side. Seeing this peak of the mountain, even the pilot was surprised that these two rugby players had done this without any gear and experience.
How could this mountain have been surmounted? Ultimately, all the survivors present in the fuse lodge were rescued and their dead comrades were buried there by digging a big grave. A memorial was made by placing some stones on top of that grave, which remained in the same condition.
This memorial is still present there and reminds us that if a person does not lose courage, he can defeat even the biggest problems. Hopefully, you will like and share this article of viksolve.com with your loving comments. Thank you very much, see you in the next great article.