‘LMI 2933 has a total failure, electrical failure, without fuel’

As tributes were held for Chapecoense victims, tapes emerged of the pilot reporting he was out of fuel.

‘We’re all Chapeconese, football has no borders’: Young fans attend the Mass at Chapeco’s stadium yesterday.

Simultaneous tributes were held yesterday at packed stadiums in Colombia and Brazil following the crash of the plane carrying small-town soccer team Chapecoense Real, killing 71 people, as recordings emerged of the panicked pilot reporting he was out of fuel.

The tributes for Brazil’s Chapecoense took place on Wednesday night (yesterday AEDT) as investigators, aided by the recordings, were studying why the jet ­apparently ran out of fuel on Monday night before slamming into a muddy mountainside near Medellin’s international airport.

In the sometimes chaotic ­exchange with the air-traffic-­control tower, the pilot of the ­British-built jet requested permission to land because of “fuel problems” without making a formal distress call.

A female controller explained another plane that had been ­diverted with mechanical problems was already ­approaching the runway and had priority and instructing the pilot to wait seven minutes.

As the jetliner circled, the pilot grew more desperate.

“Ma’am, LMI 2933 has a total failure, total electrical failure, without fuel,” pilot Miguel Quiroga is recorded telling the control tower in the tense final moments before the plane entered 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 9000 feet and made a final plea to land: “Vectors, senorita. Landing vectors.” The plane’s fuselage was found plastered on a hillside 50km outside the city.

The recording, obtained by Colombian media, appeared to confirm the accounts of a surviving flight attendant and a pilot flying nearby who overheard the frantic exchange. These, along with the lack of an explosion upon impact, pointed to a rare case of fuel burnout as a cause of the crash of the jetliner, a BAE 146 Avro RJ85 that experts said was at its maximum range on the flight from Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

“It is very suspicious that despite the impact there was no ­explosion. That reinforces the theory of the lack of fuel,” a ­Colombian military source said.

The plane was scheduled to make a refuelling stop in Bogota, but skipped the Colombian capital and headed straight for Medellin, said Bolivia’s Pagina Siete, citing a representative of the airline. “The pilot was the one who made the decision,” Gustavo Vargas of Bolivian charter company LAMIA told the newspaper. “He thought the fuel would last.”

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 the ill-fated ­Chapecoense.

The usually combative Atletico fans put sportsmanship first and paid tribute to the rival team, which they have urged be named the champion.

The names of the 71 victims of Monday night’s crash were read out while a military band played taps and Black Hawk ­helicopters that helped in the rescue operations — pulling six people alive from the wreckage — flew overhead. In the stands, mourners stood for a minute’s silence holding candles and signs reading “We’re all Chapeconese” and “Football has no borders”.

Across the continent, in Brazil, the mood was even more sombre as residents of the small agricultural city of Chapeco gathered in the team’s stadium for a Mass with relatives of the victims and the players who did not travel with the team to Medellin.

At the time they had expected to be watching their team on TV, more than 22,000 Chapecoense fans cried as they watched videos of tributes from around the world.

Three players, who are among the crash’s survivors, remain in a critical but stable condition.

AP, AFP