One glorious autumn morning in September 1992, with Mount Rainier’s snow-capped peaks rising up against a deep blue sky, I packed my flight bag, going through the checklist in my mind: License.

José Luis “Coche” Inciarte, one of the 16 survivors from the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crash into the Andes mountains on Friday, October 13, 1972, died Thursday at the age of 75, it was ...