Brazil and its devoted sports fans have been left shattered by a charter-plane crash that killed most of the players on a top-division soccer club en route to an unlikely championship game in Colombia.
“No one understands how a story that was so amazing could suffer such a devastating reversal,” said Andrei Copetti, a spokesman for team Chapecoense. “For many people here, reality has still not struck.”
The Avro RJ85 jetliner slammed into a rugged mountainside near Medillin, Colombia, moments after the plane’s pilot declared an emergency because of an electrical failure Monday at about 10 p.m., authorities said.
The crash killed 71 of the 77 people on board the flight, which departed from Santa Cruz, Bolivia.
Chapecoense, a Cinderella team that until two years ago had languished in the lower ranks of Brazilian soccer, was headed to the first leg of an unexpected appearance in the two-game Copa Sudamericana final against Atletico Nacional of Medellin on Wednesday.
Just hours before the accident, Chapecoense goalie Marcos Danilo, 31, smiled as he posed for an in-flight photo with defender Alan Ruschel, who uploaded the image to Snapchat.
“In not long, we’ll be arriving in Colombia. We’re coming Colombia,” read a caption on the chilling image.
Danilo was pulled out alive from the crash wreckage, but later succumbed to his injuries after making a final heart-wrenching call to his wife from his hospital bed.
All told, the plane’s passengers included 22 players and 21 journalists, according to Colombia’s aviation authority, Aerocivil. Among the dead journalists were three from O Globo TV and six from FOX Sports. Only six people survived the crash.
Ruschel, 27, was among the three players to survive, along with Jackson Follmann and Hélio Neto. Crew members Ximena Suárez and Erwin Tumiri, and Brazilian journalist Rafael Henzel also survived, authorities said.
But all six survivors remain in grave conditions, Brazilian paper O Globo reported.
“Thank God Alan is in the hospital,” Ruschel’s wife Amanda wrote in Portuguese on Instagram. “We are praying for everyone who has not yet been rescued, and for their families.”
Those who perished in the crash include Chapecoense forward Tiago da Rocha Vieira, also known as Thiaguinho, who found out he was going to be a dad just one week ago — a moment that was captured in an emotional video released by family members on Tuesday.
In the video, the 22-year-old is surrounded by his teammates as he opens a gift from his wife — then jumps with glee as he realizes he’s going to have a baby boy, Globo Esporte reported.
Several people shared chilling stories of how close they came to boarding the doomed flight.
The team’s distraught vice president, Ivan Tozzo, said a premonition kept him from joining the team on its tragic journey.
“It’s difficult to measure,” he said. “I was supposed to have been on that plane. But God spoke louder and told me, ‘Don’t go’ and I stayed home.”
He broke down in tears as he addressed the media.
“We would never expect such a thing. It doesn’t seem real. It hasn’t hit me yet,” he said, sobbing.
Chapecoense forward Alejandro Martinuccio, 28, also missed the trip because of an injury.
“I feel profound sadness,” he told Argentina’s La Red radio. “The only thing I can ask is prayers for the companions who were on the flight.”
Matheus Saroli, the son of Chapecoense coach Caio Junior, wrote on Facebook that he didn’t board the plane because he had forgotten his passport. His dad was killed.
“We are strong,” said Saroli, who played soccer for Jacksonville University from 2012-2015. “We will get through it.”
Both of the plane’s black boxes were found in “perfect shape,” according to Colombia’s civil aviation authority.
Colombia’s aviation chief, Alfredo Bocanegra, said investigators also were looking into an account from a survivor that the plane had run out of fuel a few minutes from Medellin.
Before the crash, Capt. Mick Quiroga had circled to dump fuel in a heroic effort to prevent it from exploding into a fireball, according to reports.
Flight 2933’s last tracking signal was received when the 17-year-old plane was at 15,500 feet, about 19 miles from the airport, according to FlightRadar24.
It crashed and split in two in an area called Cerro El Gordo, where dozens of bodies were laid out and covered with sheets on the muddy ground.
“What was supposed to be a celebration has turned into a tragedy,” Medellin Mayor Federico Gutierrez said from the search-and-rescue command center.
Brazil President Michel Temer declared three days of national mourning in the wake of the tragedy.
South America’s soccer federation extended its condolences to the Chapecoense community and said its president, Alejandro Dominguez, was on his way to Medellin.
Cesar Torrico, a spokesman for Bolivia’s civil aviation agency, said the plane had arrived earlier Monday from Cochabamba and picked the team up in Santa Cruz. It underwent an inspection and reported no problems, he said.
Brazil’s Civil Aviation Agency, ANAC, said Tuesday that it had denied a request by the team to fly direct from Brazil to Colombia because of the Brazilian Aviation Code and the Chicago Convention.
The Cinderella Chapecoense team, which is based in the southern city of Chapeco, joined Brazil’s first division in 2014 for the first time since the 1970s and made it last week to the Copa Sudamericana finals — South America’s second-most prestigious club tournament and the equivalent of the Europe’s Europa League tournament. They knocked out two Argentina squads, San Lorenzo and Independiente, and Colombia’s Junior on their road to the final.
On Tuesday, Atletico Nacional asked the South American Football Confederation to award Chapecoense with the Copa Sudamericana title, saying it would be “an honor for their great loss and in posthumous homage to the victims of the tragic accident that has our sport in mourning.”
Additional reporting by Sophia Rosenbaum and Post Wires