VizzorImage/ Policia Antioquia via Getty Images(MEDELLIN, Colombia) — The trip to Medellin, Colombia, was supposed to be a joyous one. A Brazilian soccer club, Chapecoense, from the small city of Chapeco, were in the middle of a fairy tale season.
Now, their journey will go down in history as a tragedy of massive proportions.
Investigators will likely comb through the evidence for the next several month, hoping to find the answers to why Monday night’s charter flight crashed while carrying players, coaches, board members and journalists. The accident killed 71 people, officials said, revising the death toll from the initial figure of 75. Officials said six survived.
Details are scarce and it will take a significant amount of time for officials to determine an exact cause of the crash. However, information available soon after the crash point towards the pilots facing the worst of circumstances.
The charter flight departed Bolivia on Monday evening, just before 6:20 p.m. local time. Almost four and a half hours later, the flight began what appears to be a holding pattern just south of the Medellin airport for about 13 minutes. According to flight data from FlightRadar24, the plane made three circles, during which it descended from 21,000 feet to 15,550 feet for the last two minutes of available flight data.
The flight’s destination, Maria Cordova International Airport outside Medellin, Colombia, is a notoriously difficult airport for pilots. The runway is at 7,000 feet surrounded by mountainous terrain. The frequent presence of adverse weather also makes visibility difficult.
Approaching an airport at that elevation requires high approach speeds, creating an even greater challenge in poor conditions.
Fotos de @AerocivilCol aeronave procedente Aeropuerto Viru Viru de Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia empresa Lamia matrícula CP2933 RJ 80. pic.twitter.com/ZKngqObQ5v
— AERONÁUTICA CIVIL (@AerocivilCol) November 29, 2016
Weather in the area at the time of the crash consisted of scattered thunderstorms, and turbulence could have been present in the area, according to ABC News Meteorologist Melissa Griffin.
The airport’s official Twitter account confirmed the plane suffered an electrical failure before the crash.
While the consequences of an electrical failure can vary greatly, if the pilots lost navigational aids on approach to an airport like Medellin, at night, in poor visibility, that could spell serious trouble.
The available evidence is limited, but the evidence that exists gives way to some theories of what happened on board the doomed flight. For insight into the incident, ABC News spoke with Col. Steve Ganyard, former deputy assistant secretary of state, a retired fighter pilot in the United State Marine Corps and an ABC News contributor.
The holding pattern seen on flight data could indicate the crew was attempting to troubleshoot the electrical failure. So late in the flight however, the plane may have been low on fuel, forcing the crew to make a quick decision in poor weather surrounded by high terrain. Such a combination could have been perilous.
“An electrical failure under those conditions would challenge even the best pilots,” Ganyard said. “And if there was a total electrical failure, the flight was doomed.”
#AEstaHora Carlos Iván Márquez Pérez, Director de la UNGRD, realiza seguimiento a operación de búsqueda y rescate en la zona del siniestro. pic.twitter.com/SsfOEBZDQt
— UNGRD (@UNGRD) November 29, 2016
With the given conditions, a visual approach would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible. In such a case, a pilot would resort to the often used ILS, or Instrument Landing System.
ILS allows the pilots to use radio signals to navigate the plane safely, even through poor visibility, to the runway.
A total electrical outage, although rare, would take this option away from the pilots.
Investigators will surely look very closely at the reported electrical outage and why such an event may have occurred.
Ganyard added that air safety in South America is relatively poor. “A Bolivian charter aircraft was not likely maintained or manned to U.S. standards,” he said.
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