Unconfirmed reports suggest plane that crashed into a hillside killing 71 people was low on fuel or suffered an electrical fault

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Investigators have returned to the wreckage of an air crash in Colombia that killed 71 people including most of Brazil’s Chapecoense football team as unconfirmed reports suggested the plane was low on fuel or suffered an electrical fault.

By nightfall on Tuesday, rescuers had recovered most of the bodies, which were to be repatriated to Brazil and Bolivia, where the passengers and nine-person crew were from, and had located both flight data recorders. Soldiers guarded the hillside crash site overnight.

Only six people – three players, a journalist and two crew members – survived the crash on Monday night when Chapecoense’s charter plane, an Avro RJ85, hit a mountain en route to the team’s Copa Sudamericana showdown in Medellín.



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Of the players, goalkeeper Jakson Follmann was recovering from the amputation of his right leg, doctors said. Another player, defender Hélio Neto, remained in intensive care with severe trauma to his skull, thorax and lungs.



Fellow defender Alan Ruschel had spine surgery.

Investigators from Brazil flew to join Colombian counterparts checking two black boxes from the crash site on a muddy hillside in wooded highlands near the town of La Unión.

Bolivia, where the charter company LaMia was based, and the UK, where the plane, a variant of the BAE 146, was manufactured, also sent experts to help the investigation.

Colombia’s El Tiempo newspaper cited crews from planes approaching Medellín airport on Monday night as saying the pilot of Chapecoense’s flight shouted over the radio that he was running out of fuel and needed to make an emergency landing.

Landing priority was given to a plane from the VivaColombia airline, which had already reported instrument problems, the paper said.

Shortly afterwards the pilot of the Chapecoense plane told the control tower he was experiencing electrical difficulties before the radio went silent, the paper quoted the sources as saying.

Another survivor, Bolivian flight technician Erwin Tumiri, said he survived because he strictly followed safety instructions.

“Many passengers got up from their seats and started yelling. I put the bag between my legs and went into the foetal position as recommended,” he told Colombia’s Caracol Radio.

Bolivian stewardess Ximena Suárez, another survivor, said the lights went out less than a minute before the plane slammed into the mountain, according to Colombian officials in Medellín.

Doctors said Suárez and Tumiri were shaken and bruised but not in critical condition, while journalist Rafael Valmorbida was in intensive care for multiple rib fractures that partly collapsed a lung.