Medical staff from
the San Juan de Dios hospital transport Brazilian soccer player Alan Ruschel as
he arrives in La Ceja in Colombia on Tuesday, after surviving a plane crash.
The Chapecoense team were scheduled to play in the Copa Sudamericana final
against the Medellin's Atletico Nacional on Wednesday. Photo by Luis Eduardo
Noriega A/European Photo Agency
RIONEGRO, Colombia
Investigators have located the critical flight
recorders from the chartered jetliner that crashed in the mountains of Colombia
Tuesday, killing 71 people -- including nearly all of a Brazilian soccer team.
The British-made Avro RJ85 jet, carrying members of
the Chapecoense soccer club, was headed from Bolivia to Medellin, Colombia, when it went down, Monday night.
Several members of the media were also aboard.
Officials said the pilots requested an emergency
landing due to an electrical problem, but the nature of the problem was not
immediately known. The "black boxes," the flight data recorder and
cockpit recorder, might illuminate where the power fault was.
The data recorder shows how the plane was operating
before the crash and the cockpit recorder captures conversations on the flight
deck before impact.
Six people survived the crash, officials said.
"We are praying for everyone who has not yet
been rescued, and for their families," Amanda Ruschel, the wife of one of
the players, wrote to a social media account Tuesday. "It is a complicated
and difficult situation. Only God can give us strength."
The survivors were taken to local hospitals and a search was mounted in the rugged terrain
for the rest of those on the plane.
The team was traveling to play in the final game of
the Copa Sudamericana tournament.
Emergency officials initially announced five people
survived the crash, but a sixth person was found alive under the fuselage of
the plane.
A Colombian air force search-and-rescue helicopter mission was canceled due to
poor visibility, and getting to the crash site has been difficult because of
the weather, officials said.
Airport authorities gave the plane, operated by
LaMia, priority to land after the pilots reported an emergency, but the plane
never got close to the runway. There were conflicting reports that the plane
ran out of fuel or that there was an electrical problem.
Electrical malfunctions in flight is not unusual. In
certain cases, it has led to crashes before.
In 1998, 229 people died when Swissair Flight 111
crashed in the waters ofF Nova Scotia. As with the
Brazil flight, the pilots had reported severe electrical failures before it
crashed. A subsequent investigation found that a fire had burned through
bundles of electrical wires and systematically cut power to several flight
controls. The flight crashed before it could land in Halifax.
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