The crash of the charter plane carrying the Chapecoense Brazilian soccer team in Colombia, which killed 71 people, was caused by a series of apparent miscues, primarily the pilot’s decision to fly a route that lacked sufficient fuel reserves. The LaMia airline’s plane, which barely had the range for the nearly 2,000-mile flight, bypassed a crucial refueling stop and ran out of fuel eight miles short of its destination. The investigation focused on the Bolivian airline LaMia, co-owned by the deceased pilot Miguel Quiroga, which had its operating license suspended by Bolivia’s civil-aviation authority. Aviation attorney Steven Marks remarked that the accident “should never have happened,” pointing to weak regulatory environments in certain geographical areas as a contributing factor to the human error.
Read the full article: The Wall Street Journal
Originally published by Sara Schaefer Mũnoz, Benjamin Parkin & Paul Kiernan | Dec 2, 2016 | The Wall Street Journal
