The wreckage of a LAN Airlines Douglas DC-3 that crashed over 50 years ago was recently discovered in Chile. 

Flight 210 was travelling from Orsono to Santiago on April 3,1961 when it crashed in the Andes Mountains. The 24 people on board were presumed dead.

Eight of the passengers were members of the Green Cross football squad, returning after a match. Team coach Arnaldo Vasquez, other team staff, and friends were also on board.

A LAN Airlines pilot previously reported that he spotted the plane near Linares, but two climbers reportedly spotted the wreckage in Maule, about 300 kilometres south of Santiago.

"The plane is more than 3,200 meters up the mountain," one of the mountaineers, Leonardo Albornoz, told reporters. 

"Quite a bit of the fuselage is still there, a lot of things scattered over the area including human bones.

"So this story is getting a rewrite since this is not where original accounts said."

The climbers declined to release the exact location of the wreckage, fearing that the area would be desecrated. 

Plane crashes over mountains or oceans can prove difficult for officials to investigate. Passengers and crew, the fuselage and black boxes, and the crash site may take months or years to be found.  

Most recently, a flight disappeared on March 8, 2014 while travelling from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing, China. No bodies or debris have been found, and investigators believe flight MH370 crashed into a remote portion of the Indian Ocean. The 227 on board are presumed dead.