Update: A recording of the pilot on the Brazilian soccer team flight that crashed near Medellin, Colombia killing 71 on board has been obtained by Colombian media.
Reports state the pilot radioed ‘no fuel’ and that they were experiencing an electrical problem with the aircraft. Authorities are still investigating the cause of the accident but it appears there was no fireball after the crash based on the wreckage found.
As the jetliner circled in a holding pattern, the pilot grew more desperate. “Complete electrical failure, without fuel,” he said in the tense final moments before the plane set off on a four-minute death spiral that ended with it slamming into a mountainside Monday night.
One key piece to unlocking the mystery could come from Ximena Sanchez, a Bolivian flight attendant who survived the crash and told rescuers the plane had run out of fuel moments before the crash.
“‘We ran out of fuel. The airplane turned off,'” rescuer Arquimedes Mejia quoted Sanchez as saying as he pulled her from the wreckage. “That was the only thing she told me,” he told The Associated Press.
The British Aerospace 146 Avro RJ85 jetliner was carrying members of Brazil’s Chapecoense soccer team. There were six survivors.
Photo Courtesy of AP