Introduction
Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 also known as the miracle in the Andes was involved in an accident. The airplane was carrying 45 people who included the Uruguayan old Christian club rugby team, their friends, families and associates (Silvera, 2008). The aircraft departed Montevideo on the tenth of October 1972 with the team heading to play against a team in Santiago Chile. The trip was a straight travel through Argentina. However the Andes Mountain at the border of Chile and Argentina was a major obstacle. The aircraft clashed on the mountain as it was going through them.
There are three major reasons associated with the air clash. First, the bad weather condition in the mountainous region was a major obstacle for the pilot and the co-pilot. Secondly, the miscommunication between the pilot and the air control unit in Santiago was untimely and still the pilot had misjudged the distance between the mountains. Thirdly, the air force flight 571 was limited for such a move above the mountains with the number of passengers on board (Arce, 2004). These three reasons caused the aircraft clash and they are discussed below.
The Air Force Flight 571 was a small plane that was designed to carry a maximum of forty five passengers. In the trip to the rugby game in Chile, it had carried to its capacity. With such a full carriage, the plane was not capable of passing through the mountains as the pilot intended. Its mechanical limitation in making such navigations under the bad flight weather was a disastrous condemnation to the plane and its board (Rossano, 2013).
. Due to these limitations, the plane could not fly over the Andes Mountains or meander through the mountains avoiding collusion proved unsuccessful.
The crush of 1872 Flight crash Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 was also influenced by other factors such as geographical and weather conditions. The flight was flying through the pass in the mountains which were hard to circumnavigate. The highest Andean peaks caused the pilots to search for the easier way through and they had not option rather than conceding their plan to overcome the highest attitudes by flying in the south and then west, to find their way out of the mountains (Arce, 2004).. This attitude challenged the pilots and the controllers in the ground due to the adverse weather that limited their means to determine a way to overcome the situations.
The cloud cover that was engulfing the mountain pass subjected the crew of the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 to low vision (Silvera, 2008). Consequently, they experienced low visual cues that constrained them from applying their skills to confirm the exact location that they were flying in. since it was estimated to take approximately eleven minutes to arrive at a safe Planchon Pass, the pilots thought that they had safely escaped from their crucial conditions. This is because the clouds on the mountains limited the vision to see the impending danger, since they could not see the mountains.
Believing that they had cleared the mountain, they stated descending towards the invisible mountains. Before the plane could reach the mountain, the turbulence were severe that made the plane rattle. Suddenly, the plane emerged from the cloud cover and the pilots realized that they were heading towards the peak of the mountain (Rossano, 2013).
The pilots attempted to evade the danger in vain; the right wing of the flight trimmed a mountain peak and dislocated together with the tail section of the flight. For the second time, the wing clipped on the peak of the mountain and this brought down the plane to about 5,000 feet down the snow-covered mountain, and then halted on a desolate valley.
The other possible cause of the plane crash was the miscommunication between the pilot and the controller in Santiago control room. This kind of miscommunication caused by this pilot and the controller at the control room was referred to as the fatal pilot error. There was a tactical error that developed from the pilot of this plane. The pilot had just come from another trip from Brazil and he was extremely tired but the management of rugby team forced prompted him to take control of that plane (Rossano, 2013).
The first few minutes of the flight had no interference and the control room had complete trust to the pilot by then. The unexpected happened when the pilot slept off and left the plane on itself. This is anticipated as one of the major cause of this plane crash in 1972 that claimed the lives of many Uruguay rugby team players. The next possible reason as to why the plane crashed may be as a result of poor instructions from the control room. The controller sent instructions that were not clear to the pilot and thus the he got mixed up and consequently led to the crash of the plane (Arce, 2004).
In conclusion therefore, the sudden and untimely clash was basically due to three major reasons. First, the airplanes limitation to pass through the Andes Mountains with full capacity and bad weather, secondly, the bad weather and shallow passage between the mountains that could not allow the pilot to make accurate move and thirdly the miscommunication and misjudgment of the pilot and co-pilot as there sough instruction from Santiago, Chile (Silvera, 2008).
References
Arijon, G., Silvera, M., & SBS-TV (2008).Stranded: The Andes plane crash survivors.
Arce, L. (2004). The inferno: A story of terror and survival in Chile. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press.
Rossano, M. J. (2013). Mortal Rituals: What the Story of the Andes Survivors Tells Us About Human Evolution. New York: Columbia University Press.
