BSAA Star Dust Accident
Star Dust (registration G-AGWH) was a British South American Airways (BSAA) Avro Lancastrian airliner which crashed into a mountain on 2 August 1947 during a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Santiago, Chile. A comprehensive search of a wide area (including what is now known to have been the crash site) was fruitless, and the fate of the aircraft and occupants remained unknown for over 50 years. An investigation in 2000 determined the crash was caused by weather-related factors, but until then speculation included theories of international intrigue, intercorporate sabotage and even abduction by aliens.
In the late 1990s, pieces of wreckage from the missing aircraft began to emerge from glacial ice in the Andes mountains near Santiago. It is now assumed that the crew became confused as to their exact location while flying at high altitudes through the (then poorly understood) jet stream. Mistakenly believing they had already cleared the mountain tops before starting their descent – when in fact they were still behind cloud-covered peaks – Star Dust impacted Mount Tupungato, killing all aboard and burying itself in snow and ice.
Star Dust's final Morse Code transmission to Santiago airport, received four minutes prior to its planned landing, remains un-deciphered today. The last word of the transmission – heard by the airport control tower's radio operator as "STENDEC" – has never been satisfactorily explained.
Read more about BSAA Star Dust Accident: Background, Disappearance, Discovery of Wreckage and Reconstruction of The Crash, STENDEC
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