The Andes flight disaster was a chartered flight carrying 45 people that crashed in the Andes on 13 October 1972. Of the 29 who were alive a few days after the accident, another 8 were killed by an avalanche that swept over their shelter in the wreckage. The last 16 survivors were rescued on 23 December 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.
Rescuers did not learn of the survivors until 72 days after the crash when passengers Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa, after a 10-day trek across the Andes, found a trace of civilization.
