CHAPECO, Brazil (AP) – Relatives of victims who died in an air crash that killed most the Brazilian soccer club Chapecoense spoke out in anger on Thursday, several saying the crash was avoidable.
Only six of the 77 passengers and crew survived, three of them players. Nineteen other players perished in the crash on Monday, a few kilometers (miles) from an airport Medellin, Colombia.
Recordings of conversations with the pilot and accounts of a surviving flight attendant, along with the lack of an explosion upon impact, indicated the plane – a BAE 146 Avro RJ85 – ran out of fuel.
Osmar Machado, the father of defender Filipe, questioned why this plane was used. His son died on his father’s 66th birthday.
“Profit brings greed,” he said. “Because of 30 kilometers this plane ended (the lives of) 71 people. But what can we do now? The owner of the plane died.”