Chapecoense declared cup winners
ASUNCION/LA PAZ: The South American Football Confederation CONMEBOL have declared Chapecoense AF the winner of the $2 million Copa Sudamericana following an airplane crash last week that killed most of the team on its way to the cup finals.
The regional football authority said it had responded to a request by Colombia’s Atletico Nacional club, which had been scheduled to play against Chapecoense for the trophy, that it be awarded to the Brazilian team in homage to those lost in the crash.
CONMEBOL said it would also award Atletico Nacional a special “fair play” prize.
Seventy-one people were killed when the Lamia Airlines charter plane hired by Chapecoense to carry the team, officials and journalists from a stop-over in northern Bolivia to the first of two final matches crashed near Medellin, Colombia, on November 28, apparently because it ran out of fuel.
Only six people survived the crash: three Chapecoense players, a journalist and two members of the flight crew.
One of them, flight mechanic Edwin Tumiri, said on Monday no one aboard the doomed plane knew they were in danger.
“No one knew what was happening in that moment. We all thought we were going to land normally – they had told us to fasten our seatbelts because we were about to land. No one expected it, which is why no one screamed,” he said.
According to a recording of the conversation released by Colombian media, pilot and Lamia co-owner Miguel Quiroga told air traffic controllers the plane was out of fuel, moments before it disappeared from radar and crashed into mountains less than 40km from its destination.
The Avro RJ-85 had a maximum range of about 3 000km, the length of the flight from Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, to Medellin.
An employee of Bolivia’s civil aviation authority reportedly insisted the plane make plans to refuel, but was rebuffed.
Tumiri said refuelling would normally have been his job – but that Quiroga told him the flight would travel straight to Medellin without refuelling.
Bolivia’s Defence Minister Reymi Ferreira on Monday said Quiroga was to blame for the crash for having skipped a refuelling stop in the Colombian capital Bogota in an apparent attempt to cut costs.– dpa