Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, also known as the Andes flight disaster, and in South America as Miracle in the Andes was a chartered flight carrying 45 people, including a rugby team, their friends, family and associates that crashed in the Andes on October 13, 1972. More than a quarter of the passengers died in the crash, and several others quickly succumbed to cold and injury. Of the 29 who were alive a few days after the accident, another eight were killed by an avalanche that swept over their shelter in the wreckage. The last 16 survivors were rescued on December 23, 1972, more than two... months after the crash. The survivors had little food and no source of heat in the harsh conditions at over 3,600 metres altitude. Faced with starvation and radio news reports that the search for them had been abandoned, the survivors fed on the dead passengers who had been preserved in the snow.
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December 23, 1972
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