Nando Parrado, 'Alive' Plane Crash Survivor: 'I Would Board That Plane Again' (VIDEO)

WATCH: 'Alive' Plane Crash Survivor: 'I Would Board That Plane Again'

Forty years ago Wednesday Nando Parrado left the site of a plane crash in the Andes mountains that killed his mother and sister to go in search of help. His story became basis of the 1993 film "Alive." Despite the harrowing circumstances of the crash and subsequent struggle to survive -- which included eating the flesh of those killed in the crash -- Parrado told HuffPost Live that the experience is part of who he is and that he "would board that plane again."

"What my life is ... was the plane crash, the other life did not exist," Parrado told HuffPost Live host Jacob Soboroff. "If I would like to change the present I would also have to change the past. And I don't want to change the present. I would not have the family that I have now if the crash didn't happen."

Parrado's own telling of the incident in his 2007 book 'Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home,' was called "an astonishing account of an unimaginable ordeal" by notable American outdoor author Jon Krakauer.

"More than a companion to the 1970s bestselling chronicle of the disaster, Alive, this is a fresh, gripping page-turner that will satisfy adventure readers, and a complex reflection on camaraderie, family and love," Publishers Weekly wrote in its review of the book.

Before You Go

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot