Los Andes accident: what was the tragedy that inspired Netflix’s The Snow Society? – The Sun of Mexico

The Snow Society, a film recently released on Netflix, became the most watched thing on the streaming platform in Mexico this weekend, and tells one of the most impressive stories in modern history.

The film is based on the book of the same name by the writer Pablo Vierci, where he recovers the story of the Los Andes accident, as the plane crash is known that left a group of Uruguayans trapped in the South American mountain range during the winter.

What was the Los Andes accident like?

The Los Andes accident, one of the best-known episodes in aeronautics, refers to the crash of a Uruguayan Air Force plane that crashed into the peak of a mountain in the mountain range while en route to Chile.

Flight 571 fell in the mountain range on October 13, 1972 with 45 people: 19 members of a rugby team, a group of friends and family of the players, and the five crew members of the plane.

The trip had begun in Montevideo on October 13, but was lost due to bad weather, the flight plan was modified and they landed in Mendoza, Argentina, waiting for better conditions.

The next day, although the conditions were similar to those that forced the change in the flight plan, the pilots of the aircraft decided to take off towards Chile.

The poor visibility over the Los Andres Mountain Range meant that the pilots did not see that when they began their descent towards land they were flying too close to the mountains, which ended up causing the collision with one of them.

Victims of the Los Andes accident spent 72 days in the mountain range

The impact against the mountain range caused the tail of the plane to detach, along with the people traveling in that area, who died from the impact. The front part of the aircraft slid down the side of the mountain range with the 24 people who resisted the impact.

To survive, the group divided up tasks, such as managing the few resources they had or interning if they lost help with the plane’s instruments.

However, on the 10th day after the plane crash they found out that they had been presumed dead, so they assumed that to survive they had to do whatever was necessary.

They made a pact, anyone agreed that, in the event of his death, his body would be used as food. Thus they continued fighting, until an avalanche that buried them for three days in the snow took the lives of 8 more people. They had to get off the mountain.

Three were chosen as expedition members, they left one morning with the most rudimentary equipment and the responsibility of getting help. Ten days later, on December 22, 1972, the young people sheltered in a piece of the plane’s fuselage were rescued by the Chilean Air Force.

51 years after the Los Andes accident, 15 of the survivors are still alive, and on multiple occasions they have told of the tragic experience they lived in the mountain range and how the desire to return to their family drove them to move forward.

2024-01-08 22:27:16
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