Bolivia shuts down airline after football team crash
MEDELL N, Colombia: The authorities on Thursday shut down a Bolivian charter airline whose plane ran out of fuel and crashed in the Colombian mountains, killing 71 people including most of a Brazilian football team.
As grieving relatives identified their loved ones and the first body was sent home, a harrowing recording emerged of the pilot’s final minutes seeking to land the plane without fuel.
Bolivia said it had suspended the charter company LAMIA’s permit and ordered an investigation into its operations. It also suspended the executive staff of the civil aviation authority and the airports administrator for the duration of the probe.
Investigators are examining pilot error and air traffic control problems as possible factors in Monday night’s crash.
The disaster killed most of the Brazilian football club Chapecoense Real and 20 journalists travelling with them to a major regional championship match.
LAMIA, which specialises in flying Latin American football teams, has ferried local clubs and national sides around the region, with players including superstar Lionel Messi.
Investigators are trying to piece together the last moments of the doomed flight, which slammed into the mountains outside Medellin with 77 people on board – six of whom miraculously survived.
Forensic authorities who identified the bodies said in a statement Thursday that the dead included 64 Brazilians, five Bolivians, a Venezuelan and a Paraguayan.
The body of the last was scheduled to be flown back to Paraguay on Thursday evening, with the rest departing on Friday, it said.
Details of the jet’s terrifying end emerged in an audio recording aired by Colombian media in which the pilot radios frantically that he is out of fuel.
In the recording, pilot Miguel Quiroga contacts the control tower seeking priority to land.
The operator tells him he will have to wait seven minutes for another plane to land first.
“We have a fuel emergency, ma’am, that’s why I am asking you for it at once,” the pilot replies.
Although the timeline was not immediately clear, shortly after, the pilot radios: “Ma’am, Lima-Mike-India 2933 is in total failure, total electrical failure, without fuel.”
The air traffic controller said she had since received threats, blaming people ‘ ignorant’ of safety regulations. — AFP