Chapecoense air crash: Leaked tape shows plane ‘ran out of fuel’

The team had been enjoying a remarkable ascent in Brazilian football and were about to play their biggest match when the crash happened.

While the experts worked, thousands of white-clad supporters of Medellin’s Atletico Nacional club jammed the stands of the 40,000-seat stadium where the team had been scheduled to play a Copa Sudamericana finals match against Brazil’s ill-fated Chapecoense.

Alfredo Bocanegra, head of Colombia’s aviation agency, said that while evidence initially pointed to an electrical problem, the possibility the crash was caused by lack of fuel has not been ruled out.

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.

Bolivian flight attendant Ximena Suarez, another survivor, said the lights went out less than a minute before the plane hit the mountain, according to Colombian officials in Medellin.

Teammates and fans fill Chapecoense’s stadium to pay their respects to the the footballers who died in Monday’s plane crash.

Chapecoense spokesman Andrei Copetti defended the decision, saying more than 30 teams had used the Bolivia-based company, LaMia airlines, including the national teams of Argentina and Bolivia. We no longer have 11 players to put on the pitch.

Also on Thursday, the president of Brazilian club Atletico Mineiro said his team would not play its final-round match of the Brazilian league season against Chapecoense.

Two flight crew and a journalist following Chapecoense for the game against Medellin also survived.

Colombian authorities say evidence is growing that a plane carrying a Brazilian football team crashed because it ran out of fuel as it tried to land.

An earlier report carried by Brazil’s O Globo newspaper suggested that because of a delayed departure, a refuelling stop in Cobija – on the border between Brazil and Bolivia – was abandoned because the airport did not operate at night.

The weather at the time was bad.

LAMIA Chief Executive Officer Gustavo Vargas on Wednesday said the plane had been correctly inspected before departure and should have had enough fuel for about 4-1/2 hours. We have to have a great ceremony, the kind that Chapeco and Chapecoense deserve.

Tributes for the Chapecoense continue to flow in from around the football world.

Of the players, goalkeeper Jackson Follmann was recovering from the amputation of his right leg, doctors said. “The city is devastated”.

Of those identified, 52 are Brazilian, five are Bolivian, one is Venezuelan and another is Paraguayan. Twenty journalists were also killed.

“Our club receives one of the smallest budgets in Brazil, and we are not a very big team in Brazil, and we will need a lot of support from the clubs”.

Although the plans have not been finalised and there isn’t even a fixed date for the bodies’ return, emergency services did a dry run Wednesday of the route that the coffins would take from the airport to the stadium.