The real plane crashed on Friday the 13th in October of 1972.
The film's main location was the ski town of Panorama in the Canadian Rockies. To get all 150 cast and crew members to the location every morning took a fleet of five helicopters.
Uruguayan television reported in 2005 that an Mexican hiker (Ricardo Peña) in the Andes stumbled across the wallet of a survivor from the 1972 plane crash. The chance discovery of the wallet - along with a roll of film, cash, identity papers, and a jacket- had been buried in the snow for almost 33 years, just a few meters from the crash site. The wallet's owner, Eduardo Strauch, said memories came flooding back of the harrowing 72 days stranded on the mountain at freezing temperatures. "It reminds me of some happy moments we had up there on the mountain, spiritual moments, as well as all the suffering and pain we went through," he later said on television.
Search efforts were hampered by the plane's color, white, and the Andes experiencing the heaviest snowfall in 50 years.