SukritiHighest Of All
So far, in the history of commercial aviation, this accident is said to be the ‘highest-altitude controlled flight into terrain’. For the next couple of decades, the only small wreckage was found. The site is 20,000 feet which could not be reached by helicopters and most of the research took place through the land. The voice recorder was never discovered as the issues of altitude sickness were making it dangerous enough to reach.
International Experts
The teams that were sent to collect debris were international teams including expert mountaineers. The flight’s final moments were still a mystery and the task that seemed to be an easy thing, in the beginning, was now stopped in between due to the bad weather. But weather changes and so does times. In 2006, the time seemed to be feasible than ever before.
Seismic Shift
So, in the year 2006, there was a sudden shift in the glacier covering at the mountain peak. The area that was covered with snow that was now melting. That’s when a few remains were found but no one showed any such willingness regarding the climb for the purpose of finding it this time. It was an opportunity to restart the investigation but nothing much really started until Dan Futrell and Isaac Stoner walked into the picture a decade later.
Sparking Curiosity
Dan Futrell and Isaac Stoner’s attention fell on the unsolved mystery of Flight 980 when they recently learned about a similar accident. The tragic case of the Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, that went missing all of sudden within 38 minutes of its take-off on March 8th, 2014. The search of this flight is reportedly the highest costing to date, with 227 passengers and 12 crew aboard, all preassumed dead. The missing of this flight was an international concern and that’s how Dan and Isaac got to know about the importance of the crashed flights’ recorders.
Wikipedia Knowledge
While searching more about Flight 370, they landed on a Wikipedia page which mentioned the list of 19 similarly missing flights that were never found. It was in this list, the name of Flight 980 was also mentioned. Dan and Isaac both had heard of the incident while they were young and started researching more about it.
An Easy Choice? Really?
Out of all the 19 cases, the case of Flight 980 seemed to be simpler and conquerable compared to the rest. After all, it required them to travel to Bolivia and climb the mountain. However, they weren’t aware of their fate, as it wasn’t easy at all and completely opposite to their plans.