All language subtitles for Andes.Plane.Crash.S01E01.Terror.at.30000.Feet.1080p.HDTV.H264-DARKFLiX[EZTVx.to]_track4_eng

MAN: Anybody that says that he knew
that we would survive over there

doesn't know
what he's speaking about.

You were not there.

We were there. We know.

ENGINE WHINING

I thought,
"This plane is going to crash.”

It was impossible to believe
that it was reality,

what we are living.

The cold and the hunger...

And then it got worse.

And I said,
"I don't want to die here.

“I want to go back to my father.

“I want to go back to my life."

NEWS REPORTER: An aeroplane crashed

on a flight
from Montevideo, Uruguay,

to Santiago, Chile.

My life changed in a second.

We were 29 guys alive.

So, you're alone in the middle
of the Andes,

no food, nothing, condemned to die.

I don't want to die.

The only thing we have,
the body of our friends.

We decided to eat.

It was the only way
to honour life.

To stay alive.
To fight against death.

This group survived one of the most
un-survivable stories

in the history of the human being.

CHURCH BELL RINGS

This is the Old Christians
Rugby Team, 1972,

about two weeks before we...
we climbed into that aeroplane.

There's me.

I was 22 years old.

This is some of the great players
of this team...

...who were on that flight.

Roberto Canessa, a wing.

Panchito, my brother in life,
the other wing on the other side.

Arturo Nogueira,
fantastic guy, you know.

Alexis Hounie.

Guido Magri.

Marcelo Perez del Castillo,
the captain.

Tintin.

Roy Harley.

It's sad in a way to...
to look at this picture

and know that
some of my friends are...

...lying in the Andes now, no?

Dead and, uh...

It could have been me.

But among the survivors,
everybody has their own story.

The trip to Chile
from the Old Christians Rugby Club

was, uh, like a prize
at the end of the season,

that the captain, Marcelo Perez,
had organised for the team,

to play against
the Chilean rugby champions.

We charted an Air Force plane,

because it was cheaper
than flying commercially.

Most of the team made it.

My name is Roy Harley.

I was 20 years old.

I love playing rugby.
I was really big and strong.

I was very excited,

and it was my first time
going in a commercial plane

to another country.

ROY CHUCKLES

It's incredible.

In 1972, I was 25.

I was not playing rugby
at that time,

but my friend Marcelo,
he was the captain of the team,

we were always doing
everything together.

He asked me to help him,

to get as many people as possible
so that the trip will be full.

I called my cousin, Fito Strauch.

IN SPANISH:

And who else?

Coche, he... he has a very
special personality, and he...

he make us laugh many times.

DIRECTOR: Action!

Ha! Action. Once again.

HE CHUCKLES

In '72, I was a student.

And I was studying and working

and having no... no time for fun.

So when the Old Christians club
invited me to go with them,

I was very, very happy.

NANDO: My mother and my sister
were fans of my rugby club.

And, uh,
because there were seats available,

three or four days before the trip,
I asked them to come.

I said, "Why don't you come
with us to Chile?

"We'll spend a nice weekend,

"it's very cheap now
in Santiago,

"and we'll come back on Monday."

And they said,
"Fantastic, fantastic. Let's go."

COCHE: My girlfriend, Soledad,
took me to the airport in her car.

I walked up the stairs
to make the...

the last bye-bye.

And I saw him.

When I was coming inside the plane,

I turned back and saw her
in the balcony of the airport.

And said goodbye to her.

And that was a photograph
that stayed, um,

in me till today, that bye-bye.

We were thinking of marrying next...
the next year.

I was very sad
that he had to go to Chile.

I thought that
I was going to miss him.

But they were only
four or five days.

You can imagine, young guys,

going to Chile to have fun,
were really very excited.

Obviously, you can imagine
a rugby team is always fun,

so we were anticipating
all these things in Santiago.

But the plane had to stop
in Mendoza,

because the weather
was not very good.

We spent one night there.

And we took off the next day.

I was thinking, "In one hour,
we will be in Santiago,

"everything will start.”

You know, "The fun will start.”

Flying over the Andes
is a very beautiful thing,

very beautiful thing.

The mountains are majestic.

They were snowed in.

It was the year with more snowfall
in the last 50 years,

so it was completely white,
beautiful.

I didn't have a clear impression,
because at that time,

it was not very common to fly,
you know?

And, uh,
it was very, very emotional,

just getting close to the Andes,
the huge mountains,

covered with snow
and all the black peaks.

CAMERA FLASH

That photo in the plane

was taken 30 minutes after takeoff.

I am sitting there
with Gustavo Nicolich

very close to me.

And we were really,
really very glad,

very enjoying the trip, very nice.

And then the big change.

NANDO: I was sitting on the window
and my friend Panchito, he said,

"Nando, let's change.
I want to look out from the window."

And I said, "OK, let's change.”

So he was sitting by the window,

and I was sitting on the aisle seat
when everything happened.

RATTLING

We felt that the plane was landing.

We begin landing in the middle
of the Andes.

The pilot thought that he was
very close to Santiago,

and he begin landing.

They descend in the middle
of the Andes,

on the Argentinian side.

And then it began moving
and jumping and everything,

and we have two big jumps.

It was huge air pockets,

going down maybe 100 metres.

Up again.

And, uh, we sit there.

And again, another... huge pocket.

Huge. I thought,
"This plane's going to crash.”

And I start feeling that
the mountains were too close,

and I really start feeling
very, very, very scared.

And my best friend, Panchito,
he hits me,

and said, "Nando, look."

And I looked.

About 100 yards away
from the aeroplane

I saw this black-and-white
mountain going by,

and I thought, "We cannot fly
that close to a mountain."”

And then I heard from the cockpit,

that they shout,
"Give me power, give me power!"

And the plane began to...
going up.

I heard the noise of the engines
pitching up in revs,

the engine power,

and this horrible metallic sound
of the impact.

And then, for me, instantly,
everything went black.

We all thought,
"Well, that's the end."

But the plane continued moving.

It was sliding on the mountain.

It just doesn't stop.

Wind was coming inside.

I shut my eyes
and then opened once again.

Don't understand what is going on.

I see we are going to crash against
the mountain, against the rock.

And in that precise moment,
a great crash.

And at last, it stopped.

It's incredible how your life
can change in one second.

I open my eyes,

and in that precise moment...

a lot of shouts
and asking for help.

DISTANT SCREAMING

My friends all... around,

guys with blood and everything,
shouting.

SHOUTING AND GROANING

And the passengers' cabin
was full of bodies.

When I opened my eyes,
in the front seat,

it was Nando's mother,
and she was dead.

Very close to...

to my... to my eyes.

Everything was in great chaos.

I remember I said,
"Fito, what happened?”

And Fito said, "Crash in the Andes."

IN SPANISH:

He was just like that, in a shirt.

With 30 centigrade below zero.

How do you do this?
It was really difficult.

I start having lack of air,
of oxygen.

The picture you are looking at,
open.

And you look all around you,

and was high, a thousand metres
of snow, mountains.

So I said,
"Oh, this is quite different.

"We are in trouble now."

I didn't know what to do.

But everybody was shouting
inside the plane,

and we returned to help
those who had injuries.

SHOUTING AND SCREAMING

IN SPANISH:

Nando, we thought he was dead.

And his body was a little bit
outside the fuselage,

with the head over the snow.

It was impossible to believe
that it was reality,

what we were living.

I am alive. Why am I still alive?

A plane, 500 kilometres per hour,
crash against the mountain,

and I'm still alive.

What happened here?
I don't know what is going on.

Luckily, my friend Marcelo,
he was the captain of the team

and immediately became
the leader of the group.

IN SPANISH:

And he starts trying to organise
that terrible mess,

making some place
to spend the night.

Trying to close the open side
of the fuselage with some luggage.

And then,
when the night came over us,

freezing cold.

WIND WHISTLING

It was very, very cold,

so we tried to go all the guys
inside the plane.

And we couldn't... see anything.

It was dark, dark.

But you heard people crying
and shouting

and asking for help.

SHOUTING AND SCREAMING

Initially, you try to help
the people that are worst injured.

It's impossible. It's impossible.

And the only way
to maintain your warmth,

it was being very close
with another guy.

IN SPANISH:

WIND HOWLING

A night that hours
seems to be... years.

We passed all the night

with the dead people,
the damaged people.

I always say that if Hell exists,
that was Hell.

WIND HOWLING

I felt great happiness...

...to be alive
and see one next morning.

I woke up alive once again

when I surely should be a dead body.

And other people during the night,
they didn't shout any more,

and they was dying.

IN SPANISH:

Because it was a modern plane,

we knew
that it was modern equipment,

we were sure
they knew where we were

and they were coming for us.

So we were thinking
if the plane crashed here

in the middle of the Andes,

immediately,
people are coming to... to help us.

I think that for the previous day,
before I woke up,

I could think, and say,
"I'm dead. This is death. I'm dead."”

I didn't know where I was,
I didn't know what had happened,

but I knew that I was dead,
on an incredible black space.

I started to come out
of that blackness

like, you know,
a diver going up into the surface.

I opened my eyes, and...

...didn't know where I was,
but everything was broken.

And beautiful faces!

I remember beautiful faces
close to me...

...speaking to me...

...saying, "Nando, are you OK?

"Nando, the plane crashed.

"Nando, we crashed.

"The plane crashed.”

And they say,
"Nando, your mother is dead.

"Panchito is dead. Guido is dead."”

Hadn't I'd been in the cold,

and my head
had been lying on the snow,

I would have been dead.

Nature saved me because nature did
what science does now.

They put a lot of cold on your head

so that the swollen brain
can regain its form,

so nature saved my life over there.

And I said, "Where is Susy?
Where is my sister? Where is Susy?

"She was with me here."”

And they told me,
"She's very badly injured.”

Now she couldn't move.

She couldn't move.
She couldn't speak.

I said,
"Oh, we crashed... we crashed."”

The first days were very difficult,

but we were always waiting
the help from outside.

Marcelo organised the rationing.

We had just some biscuits,
some chocolates,

some few bottles of wine and liquor,
and that was all.

And remember, we were
29 guys alive... 29 guys alive,

so Marcelo, the captain,
gave a little bit of chocolate

to every single person
in the morning.

And a small cup of liquor or wine.

But soon, we would have
nothing left, absolutely nothing.

And being there, in the middle
of the Andes mountains,

it's like being in the moon,
in Venus, in Mars.

It's like being stranded there.

You can look all over, and there's
no sign of life whatsoever

or any kind of food.

We must take decisions immediately
and create everything.

We have nothing,
just our minds, our intelligence.

We have no food, no water,
no warm clothes.

But the worst of all was the thirst,
not having enough water.

NANDO: There was no water.
There was no water.

People say, "But here,
there's a lot of snow and ice."

Yeah, there's a lot of snow and ice.
How do you melt it?

How do you melt it
with that kind of temperature?

It's impossible if you don't
have any fire or anything.

One thing is to eat snow,

but you get blisters
inside your mouth, in your tongue,

and your lips crack, so to put
ice and snow into that broken mouth,

it's... it's like a very big pain.

So we must find another way,
and luckily, Fito, my cousin,

he was the inventor because he has
very, very good and bright ideas.

IN SPANISH:

It was a very good idea of Fito's.

I found a very small radio.

And I was studying engineering,

but I didn't know anything
of electronics.

I make an antenna
to try to increase...

...the capacity of receiving
radio transmissions from outside,

and then we begin receiving radios
from Chile.

And all the radios that we heard

were speaking about the crash
in the Andes of the Uruguayan plane.

NANDO: We said,
"OK, they have put men on the moon.

"Why can't they find us?

"Surely they are preparing
a rescue mission,

"and they will arrive soon.”

We saw some planes flying over us,
twice,

and we thought it was the planes
that were searching for us.

I thought they saw us
because they moved their wings,

so we were very happy

because rescue was coming
because they saw us.

And some boys went to the food,
a bottle of wine, and liquor.

A little group ate it all.

And we were very angry
with those who ate it.

"If rescue doesn't come immediately,

"what are we going to eat?

"You eat it all, you bloody bastard,
son of a bitch."

And, well, we wait and wait
for the rescue to come.

COCHE: Nobody died of thirst.

Nobody died cold

because having very close bodies,
warm bodies, during the night,

but we were going to die starving...

...because we didn't have anything
to eat, anything else.

I remember very well

the last type of normal food
that I had,

which was one peanut.

I had one chocolate-coated peanut
was my food for three days.

The first day, I ate the chocolate
cover of the peanut in my mouth.

Then I separated the peanut
in halves,

and in one day, chunk by chunk,

slowly erasing every part
of that half peanut,

I ate half a peanut.

And on the third day, I did the same
with the other half of the peanut.

And then there's absolutely nothing.
Absolutely nothing.

Not knowing when you're going
to eat again,

it's an incredible fear.

And you will never experience
that kind of hunger,

the anxiety of hunger,
the depression of hunger,

the fear of hunger, until your body
starts to feed upon itself.

EDUARDO: We start feeling very weak.

In two or three more days, we
wouldn't be able to walk or think,

to create and invent
all that we need to.

We were dying. We were dying.
We don't have more energy.

And then your brain looks around,
and, you know, the plane,

we didn't have anything to eat,
but there were leather suitcases,

toothpaste, shoes, leather shoes.

And we said, "Let's try it.
Maybe it's food."

Just put yourself into the mind

of somebody that has to go
to eat his shoes.

We try to eat the luggage,
or the shoes, the belts,

and it was impossible, of course.

I remember Nando.
He was with his sister.

His sister was very badly damaged.

I remember he put the water
in her mouth.

And I stayed with her...
I stayed with her. I embraced her.

The state of her injuries
were absolutely devastating,

I think very, very bad.

She couldn't do anything.

She died in my arms over there.

I couldn't cry.

I... I couldn't cry.

And I said,
"Nando, what happened to you?

"Who are you...? What...?

"Your mother is dead,
your best friend is dead,

"your sister just died,
and you cannot cry."

But I think that in a survival
situation of this magnitude,

everything that doesn't have to do
with survival

is erased from your brain.

So I buried my mother and my sister
with the help of my friends,

behind the fuselage over there.

So, you are alone...

in the middle of the Andes,
no food, nothing,

condemned to die.

Uh... sometimes, Hell looked like
a more comfortable place,

I can... I can tell you.

So, after, you know, so many days
without eating anything,

I spoke with some friends.

"I don't want to die.

"I don't want to die here.

"I want to go back to my father,
I want to go back to my life."

And when I got to know
we are going to die,

I have to wait for the summer.

And I will climb these mountains
in the summer.

But the summer is two months away,
two or three months away.

What are you going to do
and going to eat?

What are you going to eat?

It was an idea that was...

in my head in the last few days,
and, er,

I try to reject it,
because it sounds so impossible

and so... difficult.

I think it was a decision
not as easily to take as I did.

We have proteins,

we have a lot of things
in the dead bodies of our friends...

of the passengers, of the crew.

And I know that everybody
is thinking exactly the same.

And Fito, when he said to me...

"Eduardo, the only way we could
get proteins and, uh...

"..get out of here is getting
the proteins of the dead bodies."

when | listened Fito
talking about that,

I said,
"Well, I'm not getting... crazy.

"I think it's the only way.

"We want to live, we are young.
And, uh... it's the only way."

Some of the boys struggled
a little bit more.

We were getting
really very, very weak.

So we tried to convince many of
the other boys, including Marcelo.

But, uh...

...they couldn't accept the idea.

FITO, IN SPANISH:

He thought
that the Catholic religion

would prohibit him to do that,

and Marcelo felt very...

uh... guilty,
because he organised all the trip.

It was the only way.

And we... start saying
that it was the most beautiful thing

you could do for a friend,

just giving him your body as food
and as life, giving him life.

We make a pact between us.
"If I die, you can take my body."

"And if I die, you can do the same.”

And that made me...

...decide to eat.

At last,
they accepted the idea, and...

well, then we could start doing...
eating the bodies.

It was so difficult to accept
the decision, and then to do it,

going to the bodies
and start cutting the...

...the flesh, no?

So, Roberto and Fito
were the first ones.

My mind was very clear,
"Yes, I will do it.

"It's no problem."

But when I start trying to eat,
my... my mind and my body reject it.

When you cut up a piece
and put it in your mouth,

your mouth doesn't open.

And later on,
when you put it in your mouth,

your throat doesn't swallow.

I... I remember
that Fito and Daniel,

my cousin, they helped me.

"Come on, come on,
you must eat, you must...

"Otherwise,
you will get very, very weak."

Starting in very small pieces,
and, uh...

and start feeling a little bit
better with the protein.

I was one of the last ones
that eat...

human flesh.

At the end, you eat a piece of...

...a frozen piece of meat
without any taste.

I can assure you that, having been
there with us on that situation,

you would have arrived

to the same conclusion
at the same moment,

and you would have done
exactly the same thing.

The 11th day for all of us,
the survivors, is, um...

a very important date.

INDISTINCT
RADIO CHATTER

We listened to the small radio
every day

to see if we could listen
to some news about the search.

And I was hearing the radio.

And we receive
a... a radio from Uruguay.

And he said...

..."Today, all the search
of the Uruguayan plane is finished."

For us, it was... a great...

...shock.

So, the search is being called off.

So, it's like being in front
of a firing squad.

Can you picture the moment?

They thought,

"There's no way anybody
could have survived over there."

And that make us very angry.
I get very angry.

"I'm not dead! I'm not dead!"

The bloody people that...

Why do you think we are dead?

We are alive here.

I felt cramps in my stomach.
I wanted to vomit.

I was condemned to die.

We were dead men walking.

Dead men walking.

We decided to organise an expedition
to look for help.

And we saw the tail.

We really felt death much closer.

“I'm dying under an avalanche.
I'm dying under an avalanche."