The doomed plane carrying the Brazilia Chapecoense soccer team was reportedly passed over for an emergency landing because a different plane was already in an emergency descent to the same airport. The new details come from leaked audio that also suggested a fuel shortage contributed to the crash while en route to its destination of Medellin.
The newly leaked audio found that when the LaMia plane asked for an emergency landing, another plane, VivaColombia flight FC8170, had already been granted the request after experiencing its own problems. A harrowing moment from the leaked audio reportedly revealed pilot Miguel Quiroga telling air traffic controllers, “We request priority to proceed to the runway, we request priority to proceed to the locator. We have fuel problems.”
Later, after the plane had fallen to 9000 feet altitude, Quiroga spoke again: “Now we have a total electric failure, we have a total electric failure,” he begged. “Help — we need vectors to approach the runway.” The requested safe landing never happened, and 71 people died in the crash.
Aerocivil, the Colombian civil aviation authority, verified that the plane’s black boxes have been recovered and will be used to determine what ultimately caused the plane to crash:
“The research now being carried out by national and international aviation experts, based on the aircraft’s black boxes, as well as technical examinations, will seek in the shortest possible time the results that will allow us to establish the causes of this unfortunate tragedy.”
Although authorities believe a fuel shortage was the prime reason for the LaMia’s flight crash, they are not ruling out other explanations yet.
(Via The Telegraph)