(Photo: AP)

Medellin: The pilot of the chartered plane carrying a Brazilian football team told air traffic controllers he had run out of fuel and desperately pleaded for permission to land before crashing into the Andes, according to a leaked recording of the final minutes of the doomed flight. In the sometimes chaotic exchange with the air traffic tower, the pilot of the British-built jet requests permission to land because of "fuel problems" without making a formal distress call. According to tracking data from FlightRadar24, the aircraft entered a racetrack-shaped holding pattern at around 20,000 feet before it crashed. "Complete electrical failure, without fuel," he said in the tense final moments before the plane set off on a four-minute death spiral that ended with it slamming into a mountainside Monday night. Just before going silent, the pilot said he was flying at an altitude of 9,000 feet and made a final plea to land: "Vectors, senorita. The recording, obtained by several Colombian media outlets, seem to confirm the accounts of a surviving flight attendant and a pilot flying nearby who overheard the frantic pleas from the doomed airliner. These, along with the lack of an explosion upon impact, point to a rare case of fuel running out as a cause of the crash of the jetliner, which experts said was flying at its maximum range. For now, authorities are avoiding singling out any one cause of the crash, which killed all but six of the 77 people on board, including members of Brazil's Chapecoense football team traveling to Medellin for the Copa Sudamericana finals – the culmination of a fairy tale season that had electrified football-crazed Brazil. A full investigation is expected to take months and will review everything from the 17-year-old aircraft's flight and maintenance history to the voice and instruments data in the black boxes recovered Tuesday at the crash site on a muddy hillside. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board was taking part in the investigation because the plane's engines were made by an American manufacturer. As the probe continued, mourning soccer fans in Medellin and the southern Brazilian town of Chapeco, where the team is from, were converging on the two cities' soccer stadiums for simultaneous candlelight vigils. The six survivors were recovering in hospitals, with three in critical but stable condition, while forensic specialists worked to identify the victims so they could be transferred to a waiting cargo plane sent by the Brazilian air force to repatriate the bodies. Alfredo Bocanegra, director of the Colombia Civil Aviation Authority, said even though a preliminary investigation pointed to an electrical problem, the possibility the plane ran out of fuel has not been ruled out, CNN Italian affiliate ANSA reported. A look at how fuel may have played a role in the crash of a charter flight approaching Medellin, Colombia, that killed all but six of the 77 people on board:

PRE-FLIGHT: Authorities have not released the flight plan for the jet operated by LaMia, a Bolivia-based charter company, but aviation experts say international regulations require enough extra fuel to fly at least 30 to 45 minutes to divert to another airport in case of emergency. Before being taken offline, the website of LaMia, the Bolivian-based charter company, said the British Aerospace 146 Avro RJ85 jetliner's maximum range was 2,965 kilometers (1,600 nautical miles) — just under the distance between Medellin and Santa Cruz, Bolivia, where the flight originated carrying close to its full passenger capacity. One key piece to unlocking the mystery could come from Ximena Sanchez, a Bolivian flight attendant who survived the crash and told rescuers the plane had run out of fuel moments before the crash. Investigators have yet to announce any single cause for the crash and a full analysis is expected to take months. Seventy-three people were killed in 1990 when a Boeing 707 flown by Colombian airline Avianca crashed near New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport after a flight from Medellin when it ran out of fuel, following an extended holding pattern and an aborted landing. "That was the only thing she told me," he told The Associated Press. Investigators also want to speak to Juan Sebastian Upegui, the co-pilot of an Avianca commercial flight who was in contact with air traffic controllers near Medellin's Jose Maria Cordova airport at the time the chartered plane went down. Growing ever more desperate, the pilot eventually declared a "total electrical failure," Upegui said, before the plane quickly began to lose speed and altitude. Running out of fuel is "very, very rare in commercial aviation terms because there are so many checks and balances to make sure you have enough fuel on board," said Grant Brophy, an air safety investigator. The city has stopped, waiting for that moment to come," said one supporter. "The airplane was being flight-planned right to its maximum.
The BBC reports that leaked audio recordings of air traffic tower tapes indicate that the LaMia Airlines flight was running out of fuel near the Colombian city of Medellin.