By Frank Kamuntu
The story of Santiago Flight 513 is one that pushes the limits of the human imagination. There are moments in the human experience in which one will allow belief in the supernatural to push beyond what can be reasonably expected from rational thought. What can only be explained by the supernatural will often remain present in one’s mind far longer than that which the laws of Physics can explain.
The legend of Santiago Flight 513 was believed by millions across Latin America for years. In a continent that fell in love with magical realism, a genre in which the line between reality and the supernatural becomes blurred, what better place for the most famous (or rather infamous) urban legend of aviation to take place?
The Story Itself
According to this story, as is well-documented by Aerotime, Santiago Flight 513 was a transoceanic flight operated by a fictional operator named Santiago Airlines. This flight was operated by a Lockheed Super Constellation, one of the most widely used aircraft during the era in which the aircraft’s disappearance supposedly took place.
On 4 September 1954, the aircraft took off from Aachen in Germany, bound to cross the Atlantic for Porto Alegre in Brazil. But in an era before advanced satellite tracking, the aircraft mysteriously disappeared over the Atlantic, supposedly lost forever.
But the story takes a turn into the realm of magical realism on 12 October 1989, when the aircraft supposedly landed at Porto Alegre, to the shock of air traffic controllers (who, if the story were real, would have wondered what a 1950s-era aircraft was doing during the jet age). The details of the story are even more eerie after landing.
Supposedly, all 92 passengers and crew members were still in their seats, with only their skeletal remains left to show for it. All passengers were undisturbed, and the captain was supposedly still gripping the controls.
The Nature Of Mysteries
The reason that urban legends in the field of aviation arise such intrigue comes from their unexplainable nature. Stories of horror and wonder leave those hearing them in disbelief and often come from an explainable event the details of which we are not aware of all details for.
A key legend in this space is the story of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a flight that mysteriously disappeared over the Indian Ocean. The flight’s true reason for disappearing has never and likely will never be confirmed, pending some remarkable discovery being made in the coming years.
But the mysterious circumstances surrounding the aircraft’s disappearance have aroused no shortage of conspiracy theories. Many today believe bizarre, unproven theories, many of which hinge upon supernatural or unexplainable elements.
A similar situation has arisen concerning the legend of Santiago Flight 513. The operator, a completely fictional carrier, operated a flight for which there is no record, log or images.
Nonetheless, the legend lives on in the minds of many, who continue to associate the image with a cabin full of skeletons. Those on the internet, too, will continue to theorize and add flame to the fire of this urban legend’s conspiracy.
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