Doomed Brazil team plane suspected of lacking fuel
A PLANE that crashed in the mountains of Colombia, killing 71 people, including members of a Brazilian football team, may have run out of fuel, a Colombian military source said.
“It is very suspicious that despite the impact there was no explosion. That reinforces the theory of the lack of fuel,” the source said on Tuesday.
Six people miraculously survived the crash on Monday night, but the disaster virtually wiped out an up-and-coming Brazilian football team and sent shock waves through the world of football.
Football legends Pele and Maradona as well as current superstars Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo led tributes to the players of Chapecoense Real, a humble team whose march to glory was cut abruptly short.
Having risen only recently from obscurity, the team was on its way to play in the finals of the Copa Sudamericana, South America’s second-biggest club tournament, when disaster struck.
The charter plane reported “electrical failures” around 10pm on Monday (0300 GMT on Tuesday) and crashed soon after near the city of Medellin, its destination, officials said. The plane’s black box recorders have been found, but there was no word on how long it would take to analyse them.
The dead included most of the team and 20 Brazilian journalists travelling to cover the match. The six survivors are being treated in hospital, officials said.
“I have just seen the plane and given the state it is in, it is a miracle that six people survived,” said Governor Luis Perez of Antioquia department, where the plane went down.
One survivor, goalkeeper Jackson Follmann, had to have his right leg amputated. It was reported that he was “stabilising” in intensive care.
Colombia’s civil aviation authority initially said 75 people were killed. But it later emerged that four people on the passenger manifest had not boarded the plane – a club official, a journalist, the mayor of the team’s hometown and the speaker of the state assembly.
“It’s one of those things in life. Only God knows why I ended up staying behind,” said Luciano Buligon, the mayor of Chapeco in southern Brazil.
Crying, Plinio Filho, head of the club’s advisory council, recalled the players telling him they were off to “chase a dream” as they left. “The group was like a family. It was a group of friends, where everyone laughed a lot, even in defeat.”
Footage of the club on board the plane before take-off aired on TV channel Gigavision in Bolivia, where the team departed from the city of Santa Cruz after taking a commercial flight from Brazil. Coach Mauro Stumpf told the TV network he hoped the plane would “bring [us] luck” like it did when the team flew with the same company to a quarter-final match last month.
The British Aerospace 146 airliner entered into operation in 1999 and previously belonged to two other airlines, a spokesman for the manufacturer said. Specialist sites said the same plane was used two weeks ago to fly the Argentine national team with Messi on board to San Juan, Argentina for a World Cup qualifying match.
Britain’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch said it was sending experts along with representatives of the plane’s manufacturer BAE Systems to Colombia to help with investigations.
‘Disastrous scene’
The plane went down about 50 kilometres from Medellin, in a remote mountain area called Cerro Gordo.
“We found ourselves faced with a disastrous scene. The plane was completely destroyed,” fire service captain Elkin Gonzalez said.
Rescuers and aviation authorities said the survivors were three players, two crew members and a journalist.
The team’s lead goalkeeper, Marcos Danilo Padilha, 31, died on the way to hospital, the civil aviation authority said. His last-minute save in the semifinal had sealed the team’s place in the Copa Sudamericana final.