Survivor Says They Changed Route Of Chapecoense Flight

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

Erwin Tumiri, the Bolivian technician who survived the Chapecoense plane crash, assures that he was not informed of the change in route that took the Lamia airline flight directly to Medellín without stopping in La Cobija, Colombia, as it was apparently planned.

“As a technician, my job is to do the pre-check. I made a report counting on a stop in Cobija. They did not tell me that we would go directly to Medellín. Before takeoff, I asked again, more than once, and they told me we were going to go,”said the 25-year-old survivor of the Brazilian program Fantástico (Globo).

The main hypothesis with which the investigators of the incident work is that the British-made aircraft crashed because it ran out of fuel, as indicated by the recorded conversations between the pilot, Miguel Quiroga, and the control tower.

In an interview with The Associated Press news agency, Tumiri seemed to point to that thesis. I don't know if it was gasoline. That is what the investigations will say, but whenever we flew we went first to Cobija and returned by that route. On this occasion they told me that we would do the same”.

The survivor's statements coincide with the authorities' decision to arrest three Lamia employees in connection with their alleged responsibility for the tragedy.

Tumiri, who lives in Villa México, a poor neighborhood in southern Bolivia, returned home on Tuesday after being discharged from a private clinic where he was evaluated for possible cerebral edema.

The Bolivian said that he had been flying with Lamia for five months and that since then he made a dozen trips as a technician hired by another company, so he was not part of the airline's staff, which he described as serious.

The plane crash claimed the lives of 71 people, most of them players and managers of the Brazilian Chapecoense team, which was heading to play the first game of the Copa Sudamericana final in Medellín.