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brazil plane crash

The plane carrying Brazilian soccer team Chapecoense, which crashed in Colombia killing most of the passengers, had run out of fuel, according to a leaked audio recording.

A pilot can be heard repeatedly requesting permission to land due to an electric failure and lack of fuel.

Just six of the 77 people on board the plane survived.

The team, Chapecoense, had been due to play a cup final on November 30. Fans instead have been gathering at their stadium for a memorial event.

The leaked conversations between the flight crew and a Colombian air traffic controller give a glimpse of the frantic, final moments of the doomed plane.

The pilot and can be heard warning of a “total electric failure” and “lack of fuel”.

Image source Getty Images

Image source Getty Images

Just before the tape ends, the pilot says he is flying at an altitude of 9,000ft (2,743m). The plane slammed into a mountainside near the Colombian city of Medellin on November 28.

That there was no explosion when the plane came down also points to lack of fuel, with one Colombian military source telling the AFP agency its absence was “suspicious”.

It is not known why the plane was out of fuel: whether it was due to a leak or because there was not enough on board.

Investigators have yet to announce any single cause for the crash and a full analysis is expected to take months.

Chapecoense team was flying to Medellin for what would have been the biggest match in their history – the final of regional tournament the Copa Sudamericana.

The team lost 19 players in the crash. Twenty journalists were also killed.

Among the survivors, Chapecoense said that two players remained in a critical but stable condition, while the club’s goalkeeper had had one leg amputated and might still lose his other foot.

An injured journalist also remained in critical condition, the club said.

Another survivor, flight technician Erwin Tumiri, said he was still alive because he followed safety instructions.

“Many stood up and started shouting,” he said.

“I put the suitcases between my legs and assumed the brace position.”

Brazil declared three days of official mourning and thousands of fans in the city of Chapeco held a vigil in their home stadium to mark their loss.

Chapecoense directors say they expect up to 100,000 to attend collective funerals once all the bodies have been identified, most likely on December 2 or December 3.

According to the Brazilian Air Force (FAB), the black box recovered from the wreckage of the plane crash that killed Brazilian presidential candidate Eduardo Campos did not record his flight.

It said the audio recording FAB experts had analyzed was not related to the flight that crashed on Wednesday.

A spokesman said they were trying to determine what the recording was.

Eduardo Campos, 49, and six others died when his private jet crashed in bad weather in the port city of Santos near Sao Paulo.

Experts from the Centre of Investigation and Prevention of Aeronautical Accidents in the Brazilian capital, Brasilia, have been trying to reconstruct the audio files from the black box in search for more clues as to what happened in the lead up to the accident.

The Brazilian Air Force says the black box recovered from the wreckage of the plane crash that killed Eduardo Campos did not record his flight

The Brazilian Air Force says the black box recovered from the wreckage of the plane crash that killed Eduardo Campos did not record his flight

“The two hours of audio, the maximum recording capacity of the equipment, which were received and validated by certified technicians, were not of the flight of August 13,” air force spokesman Pedro Luis Farcic said in a statement.

“It is not yet possible to determine the date of the dialogue recorded in the CVR (Cockpit Voice Recorder), given that this equipment does not record this information,” he continued, adding that an investigation would determine what may have happened.

Shortly after the accident, Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff declared three days of mourning and halted all her re-election campaign activities for October’s presidential poll.

Eduardo Campos, of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB), had been running third in opinion polls.

It is not yet clear who will replace him as presidential candidate for the PSB.

The PSB has said it will meet on August 20.

Analysts say his running mate, 56-year-old Marina Silva, a popular politician and a former environment minister, could step in.

Under Brazilian law, the party has 10 days to choose a substitute.

It could also decide not to run and throw its support behind another candidate.

Eduardo Campos, a former governor of the north-eastern state of Pernambuco, was on his way from Rio de Janeiro to the city of Guaruja, near Santos, when the Cessna 560XL he was travelling in went down into a residential area, killing everyone on board.

Officials have blamed the crash on bad weather, but a federal investigation on the cause remains underway.