美国国家公共电台 NPR High In Bolivian Mountains, 2 Massachusetts Men Pursue Mystery Of Flight 980

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Two roommates from Massachusetts recently set out to solve the mystery of a plane crash that took place in South America more than 30 years ago. As Craig LeMoult of member station WGBH reports, they found a grim reminder 1 of the tragedy that may or may not provide answers about what happened.

CRAIG LEMOULT, BYLINE 2: It all started with some curiosity and a Google search. That's what led Dan Futrell to Eastern Airlines Flight 980, which flew into a Bolivian mountain on New Year's Day in 1985.

DAN FUTRELL: The highest recorded commercial plane crash, as far as we know in the history of aviation, at 19,600 feet in 1985.

LEMOULT: Twenty-nine passengers died, including eight Americans. Several expeditions had made it to the crash site, but none found the flight data recorder or cockpit voice recorder. One mission by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board failed when the searchers all got altitude sickness. But Futrell thought finding those black boxes must be possible.

FUTRELL: Maybe hard for sure but not impossible, so that sounded like a good adventure to me.

LEMOULT: Futrell served two tours with the Army in Iraq, and now that he's working a desk job, this seemed like just the thing to restore a little excitement in his life. He managed to rope his roommate, Isaac Stoner, into the plan.

ISAAC STONER: I seem to have found a role as something of an enabler for Dan.

LEMOULT: The two started planning. They acclimatized themselves for the extreme altitude by taking turns sleeping in a rented tent in their basement that gradually lowered the oxygen level. They arranged for a guide and a cook. And five months later, they found themselves hiking up Mount Illimani in Bolivia. Outside Magazine reporter Peter Frick-Wright went with them and recorded them for a podcast. After a brutally 3 steep and exhausting ascent 4, they started to find parts of the plane.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

STONER: Oh, that's the CO2 canister from a life jacket.

FUTRELL: Yeah.

LEMOULT: It had all probably been encased in ice for decades, but warm conditions over the last year brought it out. And the ice preserved more than just plane parts.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

FUTRELL: That right there, that's a hip 5 bone.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (Foreign language spoken).

FUTRELL: Top of the femur.

STONER: Oh, my God.

We had definitely planned for this, but it was a moment. It was like, wow, this is real. What would the families want? What's the right thing to do?

LEMOULT: They decided 6 it was best to dig a grave. It's still not clear why none of the earlier expeditions reported finding any body parts, although they may have just been buried in snow and ice. There was speculation 7 an explosion on the flight had caused the passengers to be sucked out of the plane before it hit the mountain. At the least, this grim discovery, and many more after that, seemed to put that theory to rest. And then...

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

STONER: Yeah, just got a roll of magnetic tape.

FUTRELL: Seriously?

STONER: Seriously.

LEMOULT: Black magnetic tape like you'd find in a video cassette.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

FUTRELL: It's either from one of the black boxes or it has a great 1985 movie for in-flight viewing.

LEMOULT: Despite their name, black boxes are actually orange, and on the third day of searching, Stoner picked up a piece of orange metal and noticed wires coming out of it had lettering on them.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Wow, dude.

FUTRELL: Where do you see that?

STONER: Right there.

UNIDENTIFIED MEN: Cockpit voice recorder.

FUTRELL: Right there.

LEMOULT: They'd found it. It was demolished 8, but maybe that meant the magnetic tape did come from inside of it.

FUTRELL: This is the spool 9 right here.

LEMOULT: Now, Futrell and Stoner are back in their apartment in Somerville, Mass.

STONER: So we have a cardboard box full of orange scrap 10 metal pieces that are clearly very, very damaged.

LEMOULT: When they got back, it turned out the NTSB couldn't look at what they found without a request from the Bolivians. So Futrell and Stoner spent five months making calls and sending letters before they managed to break through all that bureaucracy. Along the way, they heard from several family members of those lost on Flight 980 who have been demanding official answers for decades. And here two guys with a strong sense of curiosity and some energy to spare had managed to answer at least some of their questions themselves.

FUTRELL: And a lot of these family members just said thanks for doing this, you know. Sure, you guys don't have a personal connection here, but you cared enough to go.

LEMOULT: Now, as they wait for the analysis of the tape, they're just hoping there's something in there that will finally help determine what happened on that flight nearly 32 years ago. For NPR News, I'm Craig LeMoult in Boston.

(SOUNDBITE OF MATTHEW SALTZ & RYAN HELSING'S "CASCADE")