“STENDEC” is not a standard communication between aircraft and ground control. It is not a recognized code, nor is it immediately clear what it even means. But it was the carefully transmitted morse code message sent out by the crew of Star Dust, a scheduled passenger flight from Buenos Aires in Argentina to Santiago, Chile, four minutes before it was due to land.
But Star Dust never landed. This cryptic message was the last anyone heard from the plane before it apparently crash-landed head-first into Mount Tupungato in the high Andes. What was it doing so far from Santiago and apparently so far off course? Why was it so sure it was making a final descent to Santiago when it was 80 km (50 miles) away?
Background to the Flight
On August 2, 1947, Star Dust, an Avro 691 Lancastrian 3 passenger plane, was scheduled to fly flight CS-59 from Argentina to Chile. The flight that day had a total of 11 people on board, 5 crew members and 6 passengers.
Reginald Cook was the captain of the flight, a British Royal Air Force pilot with vast combat experience during World War II. The first as well as second officers of the flight were also war veterans with flight combat experience.
The passengers on the flight included two British businessmen, a Palestinian, a British civil servant, a German-born Chilean resident, and one other. Star Dust departed from Buenos Aires as scheduled at 1:46 pm. After a normal flight time at about 5:41 pm, the crew sent the cryptic message to Santiago’s airport, and disappeared.
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