page_title: 1947 BSAA Avro Lancastrian Star Dust accident
section_title: Disappearance
hierarchical_section_title: 1947 BSAA Avro Lancastrian Star Dust accident / Disappearance
caption_attribution_description: English: Tupungato volcano seen from the North. BSAA Star Dust was flying from east to west when it crashed against the top of the volcano, which stands out for its height above the other smaller mountains in the surroundings
context_page_description: On 2 August 1947, Star Dust, a British South American Airways Avro Lancastrian airliner on a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Santiago, Chile, crashed into Mount Tupungato, in the Argentine Andes. An extensive search operation failed to locate the wreckage, despite covering the area of the crash site, and the fate of the aircraft and its occupants remained unknown for over 50 years, giving rise to various conspiracy theories about its disappearance.
  In the late 1990s, pieces of wreckage from the missing aircraft began to emerge from the glacial ice. It is now believed that the crew became confused as to their exact location while flying at high altitudes through the jet stream. Mistakenly believing they had already cleared the mountain tops, they started their descent when they were in fact still behind cloud-covered peaks, and Star Dust crashed into Mount Tupungato, killing all aboard and burying itself in snow and ice.
  The last word in Star Dust's final Morse code transmission to Santiago airport, "STENDEC", was received by the airport control tower four minutes before its planned landing and repeated twice; it has never been satisfactorily explained.
context_section_description: Star Dust left Buenos Aires at 1:46 PM on 2 August and was apparently uneventful until the radio operator (Harmer) sent a routine message in Morse code to the airport in Santiago at 5:41 PM, announcing an expected arrival of 5:45 PM. However, Star Dust never arrived, no more radio transmissions were received by the airport, and intensive efforts by both Chilean and Argentine search teams, as well as by other BSAA pilots, failed to uncover any trace of the aircraft or of the people on board. The head of BSAA, Air Vice Marshal Don Bennett, personally directed an unsuccessful five-day search.
  A report by an amateur radio operator who claimed to have received a faint SOS signal from Star Dust initially raised hopes that there might have been survivors, but all subsequent attempts over the years to find the vanished aircraft failed. In the absence of any hard evidence, numerous theories arose —including rumours of sabotage (compounded by the later disappearance of two other aircraft also belonging to British South American Airways); speculation that Star Dust might have been blown up to destroy diplomatic documents being carried by a passenger; or even the suggestion that Star Dust might have been taken or destroyed by a UFO (an idea fuelled by unresolved questions about the flight's final Morse code message).
caption: Mount Tupungato seen from the air
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