Chilling cockpit audio relives final minutes of soccer team's fatal flight
MEDELLIN, Colombia—The pilot of the Brazilian soccer team’s charter flight that crashed in Colombia Monday night, killing 71 people, can be heard telling the tower that his plane had run out of fuel shortly before it went down in the mountains, according to leaked cockpit audio recording.
The harrowing tape, which was leaked to a Colombian radio station on Wednesday afternoon, captures the final moments of conversation between Lamia airlines pilot Miguel Alejandro Quiroga and the air traffic controller at Medellin’s airport. The plane crashed seconds later, some 20 kilometers shy of the runway.
Two minutes into the 11-minute recording, Quiroga can be heard telling the tower that he needs a priority landing.
“We need priority to come in, we have a fuel problem,” the pilot says at minute 1:55.
The pilot is then told by air traffic control that he needs to wait 7 more minutes to get landing permission, because another plane is already approaching the landing strip.
At 4:20 the increasingly nervous-sounding pilot again asks for permission to land.
“I have a fuel emergency, señorita,” he tells the female air traffic controller. “I need landing instructions.”
At that point the air traffic controller can be heard telling all other planes awaiting permission to approach to continue in their holding pattern to allow the Lamia plane to land first.
At minute 4:50 the pilot says, “I need permission to descend immediately.”