LaMia Flight 2933

LaMia Flight 2933 was a regularly scheduled charter flight from Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, to Medellín, Colombia. On 28 November 2016, the aircraft operating the flight crashed into Mt. Cerro Gordo near the town of La Unión, Antioquia, Colombia, killing 71 of the 77 people on board. The aircraft was transporting the first-team squad of the Brazilian football club Chapecoense and their entourage to Medellín where the team was scheduled to play at the 2016 Copa Sudamericana Finals. One of the four crew members, three of the players, and two other passengers survived with injuries.

The official report from Colombia's civil aviation agency, Aerocivil, concluded that the cause of the crash was a result of fuel exhaustion due to an inappropriate flight plan by the airline, and pilot error regarding poor decision-making as the situation worsened, including a failure to declare an emergency for 36 minutes after fuel levels became critically low, thus failing to inform air traffic control at Medellín – until just seconds before its fuel-starved engines flamed out, and 18 km from the airport – that an immediate landing was required.

Background and transit to Bolivia

Chapecoense's initial request to charter LaMia for the whole journey from São Paulo to Medellín was refused by the National Civil Aviation Agency of Brazil because the limited scope of freedom of the air agreements between the two countries, under International Civil Aviation Organization rules, would have required the use of a Brazilian or Colombian airline for such a service. The club opted to retain LaMia and arranged a flight with Boliviana de Aviación from São Paulo to Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, where it boarded the LaMia flight. LaMia had previously transported other teams for international competitions, including Chapecoense and the Argentina national team, which had flown on the same aircraft two weeks before. The flight from São Paulo landed at Santa Cruz at 16:50 local time.

Flight from Santa Cruz

The RJ85 operating LaMia flight 2933 departed Santa Cruz at 18:18 local time (22:18 UTC) on 28 November 2016. A Chapecoense team member's request to have a video game retrieved from his luggage in the aircraft's cargo delayed departure. The original flight plan included an intermediate refueling stop at the Cobija–Captain Aníbal Arab Airport, near Bolivia's border with Brazil; however, the flight's late departure meant the aircraft would not arrive at Cobija prior to the airport's closing time. An officer of Bolivia's Airports and Air Navigation Services Administration (AASANA – Administración de Aeropuertos y Servicios Auxiliares a la Navegación Aérea) at Santa Cruz de la Sierra reportedly rejected the crew's flight plan for a direct flight to Medellín several times despite pressure to approve it, because of the aircraft's range being almost the same as the flight distance. The flight plan was approved by another AASANA officer. The distance between Santa Cruz and Medellín airports is 1598 nmi. A fuel stop in Cobija would have broken the flight into two segments, an initial segment of 514 nmi to Cobija followed by a flight of 1101 nmi to Medellín, a total of 1615 nmi.

The flight crew anticipated a fuel consumption of 8858 kg for their planned route of 1611 nmi (including 200 kg for taxiing). After refueling at Santa Cruz, CP2933 had 9073 kg on board. ICAO regulations would have required them to carry a total fuel load of 12052 kg, to allow for holding, diversion, and other contingencies. The RJ85's fuel tanks have a capacity of 9362 kg. Around 21:16 local time (02:16 UTC, 29 November), about 180 nmi from their destination, the aircraft displayed a low-fuel warning. At this point, they were 77 nmi from Bogotá, but the crew took no steps to divert there, nor to inform ATC of the situation. The RJ85 continued on course and began its descent towards Medellín at 21:30.

Another aircraft had diverted to Medellín from its planned route (from Bogotá to San Andres) because of a suspected fuel leak. Medellín air traffic controllers gave that aircraft priority to land and at 21:43 the LaMia RJ85's crew was instructed to enter a holding pattern at the Rionegro VOR beacon and wait with three other aircraft for its turn to land. The crew requested and were given authorisation to hold at an RNAV waypoint named GEMLI, about 5.4 nmi south of the Rionegro VOR. While waiting for the other aircraft to land, during the last 15 minutes of its flight, the RJ85 completed two laps of the holding pattern. This added approximately 54 nmi to its flight path.

At 21:49, the crew requested priority for landing because of unspecified "problems with fuel", and were told to expect an approach clearance in "approximately seven minutes". At 21:52, a full 36 minutes after the onboard low-fuel warning had notified the crew of its situation, the crew finally declared a fuel emergency and requested immediate descent clearance and "vectors" for approach. At 21:53, with the aircraft nearing the end of its second lap of the holding pattern, engines 3 and 4 (the two engines on the right wing) flamed out due to fuel exhaustion; engines 1 and 2 flamed out two minutes later, at which point the flight data recorder (FDR) stopped operating. Shortly before 22:00, while flying in Colombian airspace between the municipalities of La Ceja and La Unión, the pilot reported an electrical failure and fuel exhaustion. An air traffic controller radioed that the aircraft was 0.1 nmi from the Rionegro VOR, but its altitude data were no longer being received. The crew replied that the aircraft was at an altitude of 9000 ft; the procedure for an aircraft approaching to land at José María Córdova International Airport states it must be at an altitude of at least 10000 ft when passing over the Rionegro VOR. Air traffic control radar stopped detecting the aircraft at 21:55 local time as it descended among the mountains south of the airport.

At 21:59, the aircraft hit the crest of a ridge on a mountain known as Cerro Gordo at an altitude of 2600 m while flying in a northwesterly direction, with the wreckage of the rear of the aircraft on the southern side of the crest and other wreckage coming to rest on the northern side of the crest adjacent to the Rionegro VOR transmitter facility, which is in line with runway 01 at José María Córdova International Airport and about 18 km from the southern end.

Accident reports

The Spanish version is authoritative, also translated to English by Aviation Accident and Incident Investigation Group.