Star Dust and 'STENDEC'
On 2 August 1947 the British airliner Star Dust vanished over the Andes on its way from Buenos Aires to Santiago, minutes after sending a final, puzzling Morse word, 'STENDEC'.
1947 CE · -33.36, -69.77 · status: explained
The account
The Avro Lancastrian of British South American Airways carried 11 people. Its disappearance fed decades of speculation, from sabotage to UFOs. In 1998 climbers found wreckage emerging from a glacier on Mount Tupungato, and an Argentine army expedition in 2000 recovered remains.
The sceptical view
Investigators concluded that the crew, flying in an unrecognised jet stream, believed they had crossed the mountains and descended into Tupungato; snow buried the wreck. 'STENDEC' is still not explained with certainty, but may be a garbled transmission.