Colombia plane crash: Fans mourn as victims’ bodies return home | Sunday Observer

Colombia plane crash: Fans mourn as victims’ bodies return home

4 December, 2016
Relatives and supporters of Chapecoense soccer players, mourning the dead.
Thousands of fans were gathering at the Chapecoense football club’s stadium on Saturday as bodies of the victims of an air disaster that almost wiped out the team were returned home.

Residents of the Brazilian city of Chapeco draped their homes and businesses in the team’s signature green and black as a mark of respect for the 71 people killed when the plane they were travelling on crashed on Monday night.

The team had been flying with 21 journalists to the Colombian city of Medellin to play the biggest match in their history - the final of the Copa Sudamericana.

But just miles from the airport the pilot of the chartered BAe146 radioed air controllers to say he was running out of fuel, before the plane’s electrics failed and it smashed into a hillside in the Andes.

Only six people survived, including just three members of the Chapecoense side. Fans have been keeping vigil at its stadium, where more than 20,000 people joined family and friends of the victims on Wednesday night to pay tribute to those killed.

A mass was held in the centre of the pitch as fans sang club anthems and wept while holding candles in the stands.

On Saturday, people were gathering again around an impromptu shrine with fresh flowers and handmade posters as the bodies were due to return on a Colombian air force transport plane.

Michel Temer, the Brazilian President, was to preside over a ceremony at the airport, where he was due to posthumously decorate the victims and offer condolences to their families.

But advisers said he would not join the public wake at the stadium alongside Fifa president Gianni Infantino, amid concern over possible protests over the disaster.

“We’re still waiting for our heroes to return,” 25-year-old fan Sidnei de Oliveira Dias told Reuters. “We still can’t believe it. Though now we know they’re never coming back.”

In response to outpourings of support from soccer fans and clubs around the globe, Chapecoense has hung a huge black banner from the outer wall of its stadium.

“We looked for one word to thank all the kindness and we found many,” it reads, followed by the words “thank you” in more than a dozen languages.

Reports in Brazilian media that the plane, which circled outside Medellin for 16 minutes while another aircraft made an emergency landing, had barely enough fuel for the flight from Bolivia have outraged relatives of the victims.

The Bolivian President, Evo Morales, pledged to take “drastic measures” to determine what caused the crash. The country has suspended LaMia’s operating licence and replaced the national aviation authority’s management.

Brazilian media, citing an internal document, reported that an official at Bolivia’s aviation agency had urged the airline to come up with an alternative route after calculating that the journey of 4 hours and 22 minutes was the same length as the plane’s maximum flight range.

Gustavo Vargas, LaMia’s CEO, said the plane had been correctly inspected before departure and claimed it was the pilot’s responsibility to decide whether to stop to refuel.

- The Independent 

 

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