Colombian Authorities Identify All 71 People Killed in Monday's Plane Crash

By Sara Schaefer Muñoz in Medellín, Colombia and Paul Kiernan in Rio de Janeiro 

Colombian authorities on Thursday said they have positively identified all 71 people killed in Monday's crash of a LaMia airlines flight outside Medellín that all but wiped out a Brazilian soccer team.

"This morning we can say we have been able to identify all of the victims," said Juan David Arteaga, secretary of social protection for Antioquia, the Colombian state where the accident took place.

He said that 64 of the passengers who perished were Brazilian, five were Bolivian, one was Paraguayan and one was Venezuelan. Authorities from those countries will now begin repatriating the remains, Colombian officials said.

The flight went down carrying its crew, journalists and the Associação Chapecoense de Futebol, which was traveling to the finals of the Copa Sudamericana tournament.

Six people survived the crash, including three Chapecoense players.

Civil aviation authorities on Wednesday had said the Avro RJ85 aircraft, owned by the Bolivian airline was out of fuel when it crashed toward the end of its cross-continental trip from Bolivia to Colombia. The Avro RJ85 was built by a predecessor of BAE Systems PLC.

"We can clearly affirm that the plane did not have fuel at the moment of impact," Freddy Bonilla, Colombia's secretary of air security, said.

Mr. Bonilla said the plane, which went down in the mountains outside Medellin's international airport on Monday night, had been in violation of international and local regulations that require planes to carry reserve fuel between airports.

Bolivia's civil aviation director of operations, Miguel Patino, said Bolivia's airport authority Aasana is responsible for approving flight plans. An Aasana spokesman couldn't be reached for comment. Multiple calls were placed to LaMia's offices in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, with no answer.

The Chapecoense team, a scrappy underdog that was on its way to compete in its first international finals match, was scheduled to play against Atlético Nacional of Medellín on Wednesday evening.

Tens of thousands of fans and mourners packed the Atanasio Girardot soccer stadium on Wednesday night, singing, lighting candles and listening to tributes by members of the Colombian team that had planned to face off against the Chapecoenses in the final.

Meanwhile, air-accident investigators said they are also looking into why a relatively short-range aircraft made the transcontinental trip between Santa Cruz, Bolivia, and Medellín.

The distance between the two airports, according to website Great Circle Mapper, is 1,839 miles. The Avro RJ85's maximum range with a full tank of fuel is 1,842 miles, according to a fact sheet on Airliners.net. Aviation experts say fuel consumption can be influenced by several factors, including winds aloft and the weight the aircraft is carrying.

Mr. Bonilla and the head of Colombia's civil aviation authority, Alfredo Bocanegra, said the flight plan of the doomed airliner, which was approved by Bolivian authorities, was direct and didn't include a stop to refuel.

--Andy Pasztor in Los Angeles contributed to this article.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 01, 2016 11:51 ET (16:51 GMT)

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