Colombia Plane Crash: 81 on chartered flight included Brazil’s chapecoense football team

Mangalore Today News Network

Bogota, Nov 29, 2016: A chartered plane with 72 passengers and nine crew members people on board, including football players from Brazil’s Chapecoense team heading to Colombia for a regional tournament final, crashed on its way to Medellin’s international airport.

 

At least six people are believed to have survived officials said. The Jose Maria Cordova de Rionegro airport, which serves Medellin, said in a statement that "all possible aid was being mobilised because six survivors are being reported".

"It’s a tragedy of huge proportions," Medellin’s Mayor Federico Gutierrez told a radio network on his way to the site in a mountainous area outside the city where the aircraft crashed shortly before midnight local time.

He said ambulances and rescuers were on their way. It is not clear what caused the crash of the aircraft, a British Aerospace 146 short-haul plane, but Colombia had been hit by heavy rains and thunderstorms in recent hours.

One report said the plane, which had left from Bolivia, was short of fuel.

Medellin’s airport confirmed that the aircraft, which made a stop in Bolivia, was transporting a club soccer team from southern Brazil. The team was scheduled to play Wednesday in the first of a two-game Copa Sudamericana final against Atletico Nacional of Medellin.

A video published on the team’s Facebook page showed the players readying for the flight earlier Monday in Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos international airport.

The team, from the small city of Chapeco, joined Brazil’s first division in 2014 for the first time since the 1970s and made it to the regional finals last week by defeating Argentina’s legendary San Lorenzo squad.