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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Nov 30, 2016 14:15:57 GMT 12
from The Washington Post....‘Tragedy of huge proportions’: Brazilian soccer club's
moment of glory ends in deadly plane crashJust six survivors were found after a plane carrying 77 people, including the
championship-bound Chapecoense, slammed into a Colombian hillside.By DOM PHILLIPS, SAMANTHA SCHMIDT and BRIAN MURPHY | 5:13PM EST - Tuesday, November 29, 2016 The wreckage of a chartered BAe146 plane carrying 77 passengers including members of Brazilian soccer team Chapecoense Real
which crashed in Colombia while enroute to Medelin. — Photograph: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.RIO DE JANEIRO — It was the culmination of an astonishing climb to the top of South America’s soccer world — a modest club from Brazil heading to the finals of a continent-wide tournament. Then came a distress call from the cockpit of the plane carrying the team to Colombia.
Moments later, late on Monday, radar contact was lost with the charter jet carrying 77 people, including players and coaches from Brazil's Chapecoense soccer club. The wreckage was found wedged in the folds of a muddy and rain-soaked hillside about 50 miles from Medellin — with just six survivors answering the calls of rescuers.
One by one on Tuesday, authorities in white coveralls collected the bodies — scattered over the low brush or inside the splintered cabin — and carried them down the mountain on stretchers.
Among the 71 dead: a player who recently learned he was to be a father, a goalie beloved for his acrobatic saves, and coaches who helped bring Chapecoense to the biggest moment in its 33-year history. Surviving were at least three Chapecoense players, two airline crew members and a journalist, Colombia's civil aviation agency said.
The plane was initially reported to be carrying 81 people, but authorities said later that four did not board. Disaster management officials at the crash scene said on Tuesday afternoon that all of the bodies there had been removed and that one “black box” recorder had been found.
Carlos Eduardo Valdés, chief of Colombia's Forensic Science Institute, said the remains were being taken to Medellin for identification. He said the identification process — through fingerprints and dental records, with DNA testing as a last resort — could take four or five days. A charter plane carrying 77 passengers, including members of Brazilian soccer team Chapecoense Real, crashed in Colombia
on its way to Medellin. — Photograph: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.The tragedy threw soccer-mad Brazil into collective grief and an official three-day mourning period. All matches in South America were canceled for a week in a show of solidarity. Across the globe, the sport paid homage — a moment of silence by Spain's FC Barcelona and Real Madrid clubs before practice, and condolences from current and former superstars including Argentina's Diego Maradona.
“A tragedy of huge proportions,” said Medellin's mayor, Federico Gutiérrez.
Outside Chapecoense's home stadium in Chapeco, about 800 miles southwest of Rio de Janeiro, tearful backers gathered in a spontaneous vigil. And, in a mournful twist of the online age, team websites and players' Twitter feeds were filled with images of joyful Chapecoense players in their last hours as they began the trip to Colombia — including a poignant last video by defender Filipe Machado.The team's official website changed its logo from green to black.
“This is a very sad day for soccer,” wrote Gianni Infantino, president of world's soccer’s governing body, FIFA.
Meanwhile, aviation experts tried to piece together the cause of the disaster.
Authorities initially suspected a fuel shortage — with the British Aerospace 146 aircraft near the limit of its range — but investigators increasingly began to study a possible electrical failure on board, said an official for the Colombian aviation agency. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity under normal rules to brief reporters.
Colombia's El Tiempo newspaper reported that the pilot requested priority landing because the plane was low on fuel and that it may have subsequently suffered an electrical fault.
A team of British aviation specialists headed to Colombia to join the probe, which will include analysis of flight data recorders recovered from the crash site.
The plane, operated by the charter company LaMia Airlines, left from Santa Cruz de la Sierra, a city in southern Bolivia, where the team had arrived on a commercial flight. The company was originally based in the Venezuelan city of Merida but said it shifted operations to Colombia, the Associated Press reported. The same plane had carried Argentina's national team earlier this month, Argentine state-run media reported. British Aerospace, now known as BAE Systems, said that the 146 model aircraft began service in 1981 and that about 220 are in use.
“At this sad time that the tragedy falls on dozens of Brazilian families, I express my solidarity,” Brazilian President Michel Temer said in a statement. “We are putting all the means to help families and all the possible assistance.” Temer declared three days of official mourning and promised government help for the families of victims.
Chapecoense had been scheduled to play in the finals of the Copa Sudamericana against Atlético Nacional of Medellin. The first match of a home-away series — to decide the second-most-coveted soccer crown in South America — was set for Wednesday.
In an interview with TV Globo news at Chapecoense's home stadium, the team's vice president, Ivan Tozzo, wiped away tears.
“It is very sad the news we received this morning. We never expected it,” he said, speaking from the team's dressing room. “A team getting international attention, and a tragedy like this happens, it is very difficult and a very big sadness, but we will put faith in God.”
The president of the team's board, Plínio de Nes Filho, said he spoke to team members just before they left Brazil. “They said they were going in search of a dream to turn this dream into a reality for us,” he said, according to the news site O Globo. “The dream ended.”
The aviation authority confirmed on its Facebook page on Tuesday morning the names of the passengers who initially survived the crash. Several members of the soccer team — including Alan Luciano Ruschel, Hélio Hermito Zampier Neto and Jakson Ragnar Follmann — were among those rescued from the crash site.
Goaltender Marcos Danilo Padilha also was found alive, but he later died while receiving medical treatment, the team said.
Two crew members — Ximena Suárez and Erwin Tumiri — were also rescued, along with Brazilian journalist Rafael Henzel.
The club posted a brief statement on its Facebook page: “May God accompany our athletes, officials, journalists and other guests traveling with our delegation.” It said it would have no further comment until it had more details on the crash. Fans in Chapeco, Brazil, gather to mourn the players of team Chapecoense who were killed in a plane crash in Colombia.
— Photograph: Nelson Almeida/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.The club was seen as a Cinderella story just two years after breaking into Brazilian soccer's first division. It defeated Argentine powerhouse San Lorenzo last week to make it into the two-game championship round. On Sunday, it lost to Sao Paulo team Palmeiras in a game that decided the Brazilian championship.
The team's ascent from the depths of Brazilian soccer was the talk of the South American sporting world.
“It is common for Brazilians to say that the country has 12 clubs with actual chances to win the national title at the start of every season,” the outlet Plus55 wrote of the Chapeco team this week. “A small club, however, is slowly breaking this logic and has a real shot at becoming 2016’s most successful Brazilian club at the international level.”
The team's climb was not sudden, however. It started winning lesser championships in 2010, moving up the ranks of Brazilian soccer from the C division to the A division. It started playing with elite Brazilian teams in 2014, the article noted, “and has not been relegated since, another rare feat as novice teams are likely to head back” to the B division “in the blink of an eye.”
Some players stayed behind because of injuries. A forgotten passport kept the son of the team's coach, Caio Júnior, off the flight that claimed the life of his father.
“We are strong. We will get through this,” the son, Matheus Saroli, posted on his Facebook account, according to the soccer site Lance.
World soccer has been hit by aviation tragedies before.
In 1958, the core of the Manchester United soccer team was among those killed in the crash of a British European Airways plane attempting to take off from Munich-Riem Airport. The team, nicknamed the “Busby Babes”, was returning from a European Cup match in Belgrade and, at the time, was widely hailed as one of the powerhouses in international soccer.• Samantha Schmidt and Brian Murphy reported from Washington. Julia Symmes Cobb in Medellin contributed to this report.• Dom Phillips is The Washington Post's correspondent in Rio de Janeiro. He has previously written for The Times, Guardian and Sunday Times.• Samantha Schmidt is a reporter for The Washington Post's Morning Mix team. She previously worked as a reporting fellow for The New York Times.• Brian Murphy joined The Washington Post after more than 20 years as a foreign correspondent and bureau chief for the Associated Press in Europe and the Middle East. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has written three books.__________________________________________________________________________ Related stories:
• ‘We Are Marshall’ to ‘Alive’: Plane crashes involving athletes before latest tragedy in Colombia
• ‘A deep sadness’: Brazilian soccer players who weren't on tragic flight begin to mourn
• For one shining season, Brazil's Chapecoense tasted glory before tragedy
• ‘Tragedy of huge proportions’: Plane with a championship-bound Brazilian soccer team crashes into mountainsidewww.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/tragedy-of-huge-proportions-brazilian-soccer-clubs-moment-of-glory-ends-in-deadly-plane-crash/2016/11/29/4fdd4a74-b648-11e6-959c-172c82123976_story.html
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Nov 30, 2016 17:45:07 GMT 12
from the Associated Press....A look at British Aerospace plane that crashed in ColombiaBy PAN PYLAS and ADAM SCHRECK | 3:23PM EST - Tuesday, November 29, 2016 This is a November 11th, 2012 file photo taken at Birmingham Airport in central England of a BAE 146 aircraft
similar to the one which has crashed in Colombia on Tuesday November 29th, 2016. Colombian officials say
that a chartered plane carrying a Brazilian first division soccer team has crashed near Medellin while on its
way to the finals of a regional tournament. The British Aerospace 146 short-haul plane, was operated by
a charter airline named LaMia. — File photograph: David Jones/Associated Press.LONDON — The plane that crashed near Medellin, Colombia, is a short-haul aircraft that was used to land in hard-to-access airports and frequently flew soccer teams across South America.
Among the 71 people reported to have been killed in the crash of the 17-year-old plane on Monday night, which was part of the British Aerospace 146 stable of aircraft, were members of the Chapecoense soccer team from Brazil.
The same plane that crashed is said to have earlier this month ferried world soccer player of the year Lionel Messi and his Argentina team from Brazil to Buenos Aires between World Cup qualifier matches.
Built and sold in 1999, it was part of the stable of British Aerospace 146, or BAE 146, planes. BAE 146s and the related Avro RJ models — of which the crashed plane was one of — can have a range of about 1,700 nautical miles (1,955 miles, 3,150 kilometers), according to David Dorman, a spokesman for BAE.
LaMia, the Bolivian operator of the crashed plane, said on its website — which has since become inaccessible — that its three BAE 146s had a maximum range of around 2,965 kilometers. That's about the same as the distance between Santa Cruz, Bolivia, and Medellin, the route the plane was flying when it went down. The range is not rigid and is dependent on a plane's payload and fuel.
Colombia's aviation authority said initial reports suggest the aircraft was suffering from electrical problems, although investigators were also looking into an account from one of the survivors that the plane ran out of fuel about five minutes from its expected landing at the Jose Maria Cordova airport outside Medellin.
Because they can take a steep approach to landing, the BAE 146 fleet can use very short runways. It has four jet engines suspended from a wing affixed to the top of the plane and typically does not carry much more than 100 passengers.
British Aerospace, which became BAE Systems in 1999, introduced the BAE 146 in 1981 and ended production in 2003 for economic reasons. A little under 400 of the fleet were built, and around 220 remain in service. Major clients have included British Airways, Swiss and Ireland's CityJet.
Civil aviation authorities in Bolivia, where Monday's flight originated, said LaMia got started as an airline promoting tourism in the city of Merida, Venezuela. But with the decline of the Venezuelan economy, it re-established itself in Bolivia, where in November 2015 it was granted permission to operate charter and cargo flights.
Several South American soccer teams have recently chartered flights from LaMia, including Atletico Nacional, the team Chapecoense were to play in a cup final on Wednesday.
Argentina's state news agency said the plane that crashed had earlier been used to transport Messi and the Argentina national team earlier in November. The aircraft has also reportedly transported Venezuela's national squad and several top teams from Bolivia.
Over the years, the model of plane has been configured for uses other than hauling passengers, including as tankers to put out forest fires. Around 30 of the original BAE 146s were built as freighters.
According to Dorman, 22 of the remaining fleet have been converted into firefighting roles, with more likely in coming years. Prominent operators include Canada's Conair and Neptune Aviation Services.
“It's a demonstration of the aircraft's ability to fly in difficult terrain,” Dorman said.
The most notable crash involving the plane was in December 1987, when a Pacific Southwest Airlines flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco was hijacked by David Burke, a disgruntled ex-employee of USAir, which had recently bought Pacific. Burke is said to have shot the two pilots and three others. The plane subsequently crashed in Cayucos, California. All 43 people on board died, including Burke.
The last deadly crash involving the plane occurred in 2009, when a BAE 146 operated by Indonesia's Aviastar Mandiri struck a hill while attempting to land in the eastern Papua province. All six onboard were killed.
Most recently, in April 2014, a BAE 146 carrying 97 people made an emergency landing shortly after takeoff from Perth, western Australia, after one of its engines caught fire. No one was injured.
BAE is responsible for checking the planes' airworthiness and for engineering support.
The U.K. Aircraft Accidents Investigation Branch said it is sending a team to Colombia to assist local authorities with their investigation, since Britain is listed as the “state of manufacture” for the plane.• Adam Schreck reported from Dubai. Associated Press journalist Joshua Goodman in Bogota, Colombia, contributed reporting.__________________________________________________________________________ Related stories:
• Brazilian soccer team's plane crashes in Colombia; 71 dead
• The Latest: Father says God saved son in Colombia crashhosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_COLOMBIA_AIR_CRASH_PLANE_PROFILE
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Post by aerofoto on Dec 1, 2016 2:15:21 GMT 12
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Dec 5, 2016 9:49:11 GMT 12
from REUTERS....No fuel on board: One of the rarest types of plane crashBy TIM HEPHER | 2:54PM EST - Thursday, December 01, 2016 Rescue crews work at the wreckage of a plane that crashed into the Colombian jungle with Brazilian soccer team Chapecoense onboard
near Medellin, Colombia, November 29th, 2016. — Photograph: Jaime Saldarriaga/Reuters.COLOMBIAN OFFICIALS probing Monday's crash that killed 71 people including most of a Brazilian soccer team face one of the rarest types of accidents and perhaps one of the hardest for families to comprehend, amid reports that the airplane had run out of fuel.
Some 0.5 percent of accidents on record were blamed on low fuel, according to the U.S.-based Flight Safety Foundation.
“It is not common,” said Paul Hayes, safety director at UK-based consultancy Ascend Flightglobal.
Experts distinguish between fuel starvation, where there is fuel on board but something stops the flow, and fuel exhaustion, where tanks run dry. Colombian officials say there was no fuel on board when the plane operated by charter airline LAMIA Bolivia crashed into a hillside.
Past fuel-related accidents have little in common, but some give clues to the way investigators may approach the task of unraveling this week’s disaster near Medellin in Colombia.
In 1990, an Avianca Boeing 707 ran out of fuel and crashed after missing an approach to New York, killing 73 people. Coincidentally, the jet had flown in from Medellin, followed by an unexpected wait in the holding stack.
U.S. investigators cited the crew's failure to manage fuel or declare an emergency promptly — two possible scenarios likely to be examined in this week’s disaster.
Crew behavior will not be the only focus. Recent probes in Ireland and elsewhere have shown that officials may probe deep into an airline's processes and operating systems and, if necessary, the relationship between companies involved.
“If it is confirmed that there was no fuel, then it will be asked why that happened. Was there a fuel leak? Was the amount of fuel placed on board the same as planned? Were there stronger headwinds than expected?” Hayes said.FLIGHT DISTANCEAmong key areas for investigation will be the length of flight, reportedly at the edge of the BAe 146's range depending on fuel tank layout, payload and weather. The aircraft had flown the same 3,000-km route in the opposite direction once this year, according to tracking site Flightradar24.
“Judging by the long stage length, investigators will want to look at the way the aircraft was dispatched. What were the management and company processes that led up to the dispatch of this aircraft?” Hayes said.
Experts stress it is too early to be definitive about this accident and that most crashes result from several factors.
In the most recent accident blamed on missing fuel, 16 people were killed in 2005 when a Tunisian Tuninter ATR turboprop was fitted with the wrong type of fuel gauge.
While the full history of Monday's LAMIA flight and crew conversations are not available, experts said leaked recordings suggested the pilot had reported a fuel problem relatively soon after coming near its destination.
Jets should have enough fuel to wait at least 30 minutes in a holding pattern and then divert elsewhere, Hayes said.
UK investigators reading two cockpit recorders — one for voice and the other for data — on behalf of the Colombian inquiry will try to find what technical signals the crew received and whether they discussed the possibility of diverting or declaring a formal emergency earlier.
Not all fuel shortages end in disaster, but such instances are exceptionally rare.
In 1983, 61 passengers had a narrow escape when an Air Canada Boeing 767 glided from 35,000 feet in an incident nicknamed the Gimli glider after the place where it landed.
In 2001, a Canadian Air Transat A330 with over 300 people on board glided for almost 100 miles to touch down in the Azores after the engines stopping working due to a faulty fuel line.• Editing by Hugh Lawson.www.reuters.com/article/us-colombia-crash-fuel-idUSKBN13Q5MZ
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Dec 11, 2016 13:25:06 GMT 12
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Post by aerofoto on Dec 11, 2016 13:43:21 GMT 12
"THIS" is allegedly an authentic ATC recording between the accident aircraft, other aircraft, and the controllers at Rio Negro/Medellin, during the emergency.ñ
This "IS" all in spanish (not difficult), but, features an English text translation also .... and which (due to my being able to communicate reasonably well in Spanish) nothing of significance appears lost/miscommuniated through translation ....
The aircrft "was" originally flight planned to tech-stop here at Bogota (for refuelling) .... so official channels have told us here in Colombia .... BUT .... the crew evidently elected to "overfly Bogota" and proceed directly to Rio Negro/their destination airport.
Mark C
Bogota DC, Republica de Colombia
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