The world of football was in shock this week as a chartered plane carrying the Brazilian football team Chapecoense crash landed in Colombia, killing almost everyone on board.

Seventy one people lost their lives last Monday when the LaMia Airlines Flight 2933 crashed landed into the mountains about 53 miles from Medellín airport, Columbia. Seventy seven people were on board when the plane plunged from the sky. Seven members of the crew died, as well as 68 passengers -19 players, the entire coaching staff, club staff, 2 guests and 21 journalists. Six people survived, these included three players, two crew members and a journalist. None of the players are ever likely to play again due to the extent of their injuries.

In short, this was a terrible tragedy. Seventy one people, most of them young adults with their entire lives to look forward to are no longer with us. Dozens of Brazilian families are going through unspeakable grief, and our thoughts and prayers are with them.

But as the days have passed since the accident, the true nature of this tragedy is becoming clearer. The details of the flight are at once horrifying, and disturbing. These people need not have died. Ewan MacKenna, speaking frankly as always, said on the Second Captains podcast on Thursday:

“The journey was not only illegal, it was suicide.”

A series of unfortunate events and circumstances all came together to make this nightmare a reality.

The Fairytale Team

Chapecoense is a small football club from the southern city of Chapecó whose ascent to the top division of Brazilian football has been remarkable. Unlike many of the bigger names in Brazilian club football such as Santos and Corinthians, Chapecoense operates on a shoe-string budget. The team was flying to Medellín, Colombia to face that city’s Atlético Nacional team in the final of the Copa Sudamericana . This would have marked the crowning moment for a team which only reached the top division of Brazilian football in 2014. But alas it was not to be.

Team officials originally planned to fly from São Paulo directly to the city of Medellín. The team chose to use LAMIA Airlines a Bolivian charter airline with only one operational aeroplane (with two currently out of use.) The Argentinian national team flew aboard the same LAMIA airlines on the way to Belo-Horizonte for a qualifying fixture against Brazil only two weeks ago.

Brazilian law stipulates that Bolivian charter planes are not permitted to enter Brazilian airspace. Thus the team was forced to fly commercially into the Bolivian low lands city of Santa Cruz and then change planes before departing for Medellin in Columbia.

The Swiss Cheese Effect

Aviation experts often speak of the “Swiss Cheese Effect” when describing why a plane goes down. The idea as Ewan MacKenna described on Seconds Captains podcast is that

“A load of holes have to line up perfectly for a plane to crash.”

The commercial plane carrying the team arrived in Santa Cruz, Bolivia 45 minutes late, meaning the LAMIA Airline chartered flight was late departing. The plane which the squad, coaches and journalists boarded was an AVRO Jet- a carbon copy of the City Jet planes which we see arrive and depart from our Irish airports every day. In fact this Avro RJ85 jet was owned and operated by City Jet from 2007-2011 an Irish regional airline with headquarters in Swords county Dublin. This writer flew from London City Airport into Cork Airport aboard such a jet in the past 12 months. They are a small, short haul plane that seat about 110 passengers at capacity.

Before being taken offline the website for the airliner said the jetliners maximum range was 1,600 nautical miles, just under the distance between Medellin and Santa Cruz. To put it in a European context, that distance is further than from Dublin to Istanbul a route only flown by Boeing 737’s or the Airbus equivalent. The Boeing 737 is a much larger plane and has a longer range.

Aviation experts agree that best practice would mean the British Aerospace AVRO Jet would have a maximum scheduled flight time of three hours, if there is no scheduled refuel. International Aviation law requires that a plane carries at least 30 minutes of fuel reserves, have enough fuel to reach an alternative airport which can be between 20-30 minutes and also 5% additional fuel as a contingency in case of thunderstorms or other issues.

Being extremely generous, the plane should not have been in the air for more than four hours. Yet from take-off in Santa Cruz Bolivia to the plane crash landing into the Andes mountain, the plane had flown for four and a half hours. As Ewan put it

“Even in the best case scenario this (the plane) was going to run out of fuel.”

The Scheduled Refuel

This plane had completed this journey from Santa Cruz to Medellin before, but on both occasions it stopped to refuel in a small Northern Bolivian airport called Cobija. This plane was scheduled to refuel at Cobija airport also, according to the statement LAMIA have released. But with departure being delayed by 45 minutes the plane did not make it to the airport which shuts for landing overnight. The plane was then supposed to refuel in Bogota as it entered Columbia but for reasons that are as of now unknown, it did not.

Even amidst such appalling negligence the pilot may have landed the plane on fumes, had it not been put on hold as it approached Jose Maria Cordova International airport. A separate plane which had departed from Bogota and was headed for the Caribbean believed it was leaking fuel and requested priority landing at Medellin.

The pilot of the LAMIA airlines plane had made contact with the controller on the ground in Jose Maria Cordova International airport but had only to that point spoken of “fuel issues.” The controller correctly gave priority to the Caribbean bound plane, as she was unaware the extent of the peril LAMIA Flight 339 was in. As the jetliner circled in a holding pattern, the pilot grew more desperate.

“Complete electrical failure, without fuel,”

he said in the tense final moments before the plane set off on a four-minute death spiral. By then the controller had gauged the seriousness of the situation and told the other plane to abandon its approach to make way for the charter jet.

It was too late. Just before going silent, the pilot said he was flying at an altitude of 9,000 feet and made a final plea to land: “Vectors, senorita. Landing vectors.”

Basically in terms of the needless loss of life of #Chapecoense plane, we are veering past human error and into criminal realms. — Ewan MacKenna (@EwanMacKenna) December 1, 2016

Steven Draper, who flew a variant of the LaMia aircraft for British Airways over a period of 15 years, is quoted in the Telegraph:

“If you are into your fuel reserve, it is a mayday […] you have to specify in the call that it is related to fuel, and how many minutes of flying time you have.”

Pilot & Owner

A key detail in all this is that the pilot of the plane Miguel Quiroga was also the co-owner of LAMIA Airlines. Under aviation law you must say “fuel emergency” “Mayday” or “Pan Pan” to receive priority landing. However ass soon as those terms are used the airliner is open to a legal investigation on the ground. Consequences include a hefty fine and possible jail time.

The reader can make up their own mind as to why the pilot and owner of the airline chose not to declare the state of emergency they obviously found themselves in. Aviation experts have said it was impossible that Quiroga could have missed the alarms that would have been sounding warning him that the plane was almost out of fuel.

The cause of this accident was initially reported as being due to an electrical fault. In this type of plane the electronics are controlled by generators in engine one and four. These shut down due to lack of fuel, cutting off the electronics. The plane did not explode on impact likely due to complete lack of fuel, this would save the lives of the six survivors.

BBC news reports that as of the 1st of December 2016, Bolivia’s aviation authority has suspended the operating licence of LAMIA Airlines.

“Having been able to do an inspection of all of the remains and parts of the plane, we can affirm clearly that the aircraft did not have fuel at the moment of impact,” Colombian aviation chief Alfredo Bocanegra said.

It has also been revealed tha LAMIA Airlines did not meet IATA regulations that would have permitted it to handle the aftermath of the crash. Instead, the airline had to borrow 100 coffins requiring Avianca, the Colombian flagship carrier, and the Colombian and Brazilian governments to step in and pick up the slack.

This tragedy was easily avoidable. Accidents normally come down to a series of problems and decisions that add up to catastrophe. There are often moments, with hindsight, where a tragedy could have been averted. What we can say for sure is this- The plane did not go down due to a technical issue, it ran out of fuel. The pilot chose not to refuel at Bogota airport in Columbia, this was at best reckless. He then chose not to inform the air traffic controller at Jose Maria Cordova International airport the extent of the emergency. This was criminal. Reckless plus criminal equals fatal.

Unconfirmed reports carried by the BBC claim that a Bolivian official at Santa Cruz airport checked the paperwork for the LAMIA plane and pointed out to pilot that the amount of fuel the plane had was not sufficient to complete the journey to Medellin. This would contradict Gustavo Vargas, the other co-owner of the airline who claimed that it was in the flights itinerary to refuel.

With the pilot now deceased many questions will remain unanswered. Was the pilot taking risks that he would not have taken had he simply been a regular pilot, and not had a vested interest in the company? I cannot answer that question. I have merely presented you with the facts in this appalling tragedy.

Rest in Peace to all of the 71 who died.

Conor O’Mahony, Pundit Arena

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Read More About: Atletico Nacional (Colombia), Blooming, Brazilian plane crash, Chapecoense, Cobija., colombia, CONMEBOL, Jose Maria Cordova airport, LAMIA, LaMia Airlines Flight 2933, Marco Antonio Rocha, Medellin, Messi LAMIA, Miguel Quiroga, Oriente Petrolero and Real Potosi (Bolivia) and Olimpia (Paraguay), plane crash, Santa Cruz, south american football, The Strongest, Top Story