ALIVE!

It all began on Thursday the twelvth of October in 1972. There were 45
people on the Fairchild, a Uruguayan military plane chartered by the "Old
Christians," a Uruguayan rugby team, for a game in Chile.
At 8:02am the Fairchild took off from Carrasco, onboard were 40 passengers
and 5 crew. The first three hours of the flight went by without trouble, 
around 11:00 the Andes came into view, shrouded in clouds. The Fairchild could
only fly as high as 22,500 feet, so the plane could not fly above the Andes, 
but through them, using designated gaps, or "passes", between the peaks. 
The pilots, Col. Ferradas and Lt. Col. Lagurara, knew the clouds meant the
possibility of bad weather conditions. Lagurara confirmed their suspicions with
a call to Mendoza, Argentina, a town which lay ahead of them at the foothills
of the mountains. Ferradas decided to land in Mendoza, the weather in the Andes
was too rough to risk flying through. Upon landing they were informed the weather
would not be letting up, and the announcement was made that they'd be staying in
Mendoza for the night. The passengers and crew managed to check themselves into 
hotels, the passengers instructed to arrive back at the airport around noon.
They were forced to continue. (It is illegal for a foreign military vehicle to
stay on Argentinean soil for more than 24 hours.
The Uruguayan Fairchild took off from Mendoza at 2:18 on the afternoon of October
13, after waiting most of the morning for weather to clear up. It was decided 
that the plane would take a route through the mountains known as Planchon Pass. 
Flying south from Mendoza along the edge of the mountains, the Fairchild arrived
over Marlargue at 3:08 at which time the plane turned west into the Andes en route
to Curico, Chile. Between them lay the Planchon pass. 
But in the air, because the very poor weather conditions the pilots became
disoriented. They thought they had made it through Planchon Pass, but they had
actually flown straight into the highest peaks of the Andes.
The Fairchild went down just to the Argentinean side of the Chilean border.
The tail snapped off first, then the wings. Only the fuselage remained. All hope
seemed lost. The SURVIVORS WERE ON THE MOUNTAIN FOR 72 days. They put their lives
in God's hands, but in the end, they saved themselves. Just before Christmas, 
Fernando Parrado and Roberto Cannessa made their way to civilization, and the rest
of the survivors were rescued by helicopter. Out of 45, sixteen men survived.

The story was unbelievable, but it was inspirational. It's about believing in
yourself in a bleak situation, about overcoming nature, about finding the strength
within yourself to overcome all odds.

THE AIRCRAFT:
The plane the Old Christians boarded was a Fairchild FH-227D, issued No. 571 by the
Air Force. It was manufactured in Maryland, U.S.A. in 1970, and flown down to Uruguay
in 1971 by Col. Ferradas. By October of 1972 the plane had logged 792 flight hours 
and was considered to be in tip-top shape. The Fairchild was usually used for cargo
purposes, the seats were removable and arranged in pairs on either side of the plane, 
there were 12 rows containing 48 seats more than enough to accommodate the 40 
passengers that were scheduled to be aboard as well as the 2 crew members that sat
in the passenger cabin. Just forward of the passenger cabin, separated by a thin
bulkhead, was a forward luggage compartment, where an entrance door was located.
In front of that was the cockpit. To the rear of the Passenger cabin were the galley
and lavatory, and behind that a rear luggage compartment.


