Plane carrying Brazil's Chapecoense football team crashes in Colombia

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Plane carrying Brazil's Chapecoense football team crashes in Colombia

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A charter aircraft carrying 81 people including members of Brazil’s Chapecoense football team has crashed en route to Medellin airport, Colombia.

Brazil has declared three days of national mourning following the crash which occurred in the early hours of Tuesday, killing at least 75 people including players, journalists and crew members.

Six people – three players, two crew and a journalist – are thought to have survived, although reports suggest that another person was rescued but later died in hospital.

Colombian officials said 72 passengers and nine crew members were aboard the charter flight which is believed to have started its journey in São Paulo, Brazil, on Monday afternoon and stopped over in Bolivia before heading for the Colombian city of Medellín.

The plane, a British Aerospace 146 short-haul aircraft, was carrying the team, club staff and journalists to Chapecoense’s Copa Sudamericana finals match against Atlético Nacional in Colombia’s second largest city.

A statement from José Maria Córdova airport in Medellín said the plane had declared an emergency at 10pm on Monday because of electrical failures. It crashed in a mountainous rural area outside Medellín and heavy rain, fog and darkness hampered rescue efforts.

“At the moment we know that the disaster happened in Cerro Gordo in the municipality of La Unión and that there were 72 passengers and nine crew aboard, including the football team Chapecoense Real. There are reported to be six survivors,” the statement read.

Flight tracking service Flightradar24 tweeted that the last tracking signal from flight 2933 had been received when it was at 15,500ft, about 30km from its destination, which sits at an altitude of 7,000ft.

Colombia’s civil aviation authority named six survivors in a statement posted on Facebook on Tuesday. It said two crew members – Ximena Suárez, a flight attendant, and Erwin Tumiri, a flight technician – had been taken to the Somer clinic in Rionegro.

Three players – Alan Luciano Ruschel, Jakson Ragnar Follmann and Helio Hermito Zampier – were also said to be in hospital, along with a journalist, Rafael Valmorbida. The football club later told Associated Press that another player, goalkeeper Marcos Danilo Padilha, had been rescued from the plane but had died of his injuries in hospital.

Amanda Ruschel, who is married to Alan Ruschel, the first player to be taken to hospital, posted an Instagram image of the player alongside the message:

“Thank God Alan is in the hospital, stable. We are praying for all of those who were not yet rescued and offer our support to all their relatives. This is a complicated, difficult situation. Only God himself can give us strength. Thank you God.”

Nivaldo, a Brazilian goalkeeper who has been at the club since 2006 but did not travel to Colombia, told the UOL Esporte website that he had been woken at 5am on Tuesday by a phone call from a worried friend who wanted to know if he was on the flight.

Nivaldo said he had tried to call his teammates and other club staff who were on the plane but that nobody picked up the phone.

“Everybody is praying that the worst hasn’t happened,” he told the website. “I’m bracing for the worst,” Nivaldo, 42, added. “I don’t want to, I can’t believe it, but you have to be strong.”

The Brazilian president, Michel Temer, announced the mourning period and offered his condolences to the friends and families of those on the plane in a series of tweets.

“I express my solidarity at this sad time when dozens of Brazilian families have been affected by tragedy,” he wrote.

“We are offering every form of help and assistance that we can to the families. The air force and foreign ministry have been put to work. The government will do everything possible to relieve the pain of these friends and families of Brazilian sport and journalism.”

Raimundo Colombo, the governor of Santa Catarina, where the Chapecoense team is based, issued a statement expressing his profound sadness.

Brazilian team Chapecoense at airport before plane crash in Colombia – video
Colombo noted that Chapecoense were not only representing the city of Chapecó and the state of Santa Catarina, but were also making history as the first club from the region to reach the final of an international competition.

He said he was in a state of shock and expressed his solidarity with the families of the players, club officials and journalists who formed the delegation “at what is a time of great pain for the sporting community in Santa Catarina and in Brazil”.

Medellín’s mayor, Federico Gutiérrez, described the crash as a “tragedy of huge proportions”.

Chapecoense fans gathered outside the club’s stadium in Chapecó to mourn the dead, console one another and offer their prayers. The club posted a video of the team in good spirits shortly before takeoff on its Facebook page.

Some fans left messages under the video. “I am from Rio de Janeiro and I am praying for you. May God and Our Lady send their angels to take care of you all,” wrote one.

Fans of Chapecoense soccer team gather outside the Arena Conda stadium in Chapecó.

The Diário Catarinense newspaper, which covers Santa Catarina, said there was confusion and anguish among those linked to the club in Chapecó, a small city of about 200,000 residents.

Cissa Soletti, who works for the team’s marketing department, told the newspaper it was instructing staff to gather at the club’s HQ. The mayor of Chapecó, Luciano Buligon, who was due to fly to Colombia for the match, said he knew nothing beyond the fact there were some survivors.

British inspectors are flying out to the crash site as part of the investigation in line with international protocols.

A spokesman for the UK’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch said: “As the state of manufacture of the aircraft, the AAIB is sending a team of inspectors to Colombia to assist with the investigation of the aircraft accident at Medellín.”

Chapecoense play in Brazil’s premier division, Série A. The club was founded in 1973 and first won promotion to the top flight in 2014.

The Copa Sudamericana is South America’s second-tier club competition, one rung below the Copa Libertadores, the centrepiece of the continent’s football calendar. The winner of the Copa Sudamericana gains automatic entry into next season’s Copa Libertadores.

The final, like each round of the tournament, is a two-legged tie, consisting of a home and an away fixture. Colombia’s Atlético Nacional were due to visit Brazil for the return leg on 7 December.