Pilot told Colombia controllers 'no fuel' before crash that killed 71

Rescuers work Tuesday around the wreckage of a chartered plane that crashed into a Colombian mountainside late Monday near Medellin while carrying a Brazilian soccer team to matches. Officials said that out of 77 people aboard, only six survived.
Rescuers work Tuesday around the wreckage of a chartered plane that crashed into a Colombian mountainside late Monday near Medellin while carrying a Brazilian soccer team to matches. Officials said that out of 77 people aboard, only six survived.

MEDELLIN, Colombia — The pilot of the chartered plane carrying a Brazilian soccer team told air traffic controllers he had run out of fuel and pleaded for permission to land before crashing into the Andes, according to a leaked recording of the final minutes of the flight.

In the sometimes chaotic exchange with the air traffic tower, the pilot of the British-built jet could be heard repeatedly requesting authorization to land. "Complete electrical failure, without fuel," he said in the tense final seconds before the plane set off on a four-minute death spiral that ended with it slamming into a mountainside Monday night.

A female controller could be heard giving instructions as the aircraft lost speed and altitude about 8 miles from Medellin's international airport. Just before going silent the pilot said he was flying at an altitude of 9,000 feet and made a final plea for a landing code: "Vectors, senorita. Landing vectors."

The recording, obtained Wednesday by Colombian media, appeared to confirm the accounts of a surviving flight attendant and a pilot flying nearby who overheard the exchange. These, along with the lack of an explosion upon impact, point to a rare case of fuel running out as a cause of the crash of the jetliner, which was flying at its maximum range.

For now, authorities are avoiding singling out any one cause of the crash, which killed all but six of the 77 people on board, including members of Brazil's Chapecoense soccer team traveling to Medellin for the Copa Sudamericana finals.

A full investigation is expected to take months and will review everything from the 17-year-old aircraft's flight and maintenance history to the voice and instruments data in the black boxes recovered Tuesday at the crash site on a muddy hillside. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board was taking part in the investigation because the plane's engines were made by an American manufacturer.

As the probe continued, mourning soccer fans in Medellin and the southern Brazilian town of Chapeco, where the team is from, were converging on the two cities' soccer stadiums for simultaneous candlelight vigils. The six survivors were recovering in hospitals, with three in critical but stable condition, while forensic specialists worked to identify the victims so they could be transferred to a waiting cargo plane sent by the Brazilian air force to repatriate the bodies.

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. Planes need to have enough extra fuel on board to fly at least 30 to 45 minutes to another airport in the case of an emergency, and rarely fly in a straight line because of turbulence or other reasons.

Before being taken offline, the website of LaMia, the Bolivian-based charter company, said the BAE 146 Avro RJ85 jetliner's maximum range was 1,600 nautical miles — just under the distance between Medellin and Santa Cruz, Bolivia, where the flight originated carrying close to its full passenger capacity.

"If this is confirmed by the investigators it would be a very painful because it stems from negligence," Bocanegra told Caracol Radio on Wednesday when asked whether the plane should not have attempted such a long haul.

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