“We were living a dream,” says mayor of city that lost football team

A dream—this is how the mayor of the city of Chapecó, Luciano Buligon, referred to the Chapecoense football team as they prepared to fight for their first international title. But the dream shattered to pieces when the airplane taking the athletes crashed in the early hours of Tuesday (Nov. 29) shortly before landing in Medellín, where the first of the South American cup finals was slated to take place.

“Chapecoense was going through a great moment. We were living a dream, I'd make a point of saying that all the time. A country town that was three times in the A series of the much-coveted Brazilian Championship,” Buligon said in an interview with journalists in São Paulo.

The mayor had originally planned to take the same flight as the team, but decided to put off his trip to stay in São Paulo for a meeting on partnerships with the private enterprise for Chapecó. He would head for Medellín on an afternoon flight to watch the first final in the South American cup against Colômbia's Atlético Nacional.

Now, the dream has turned into a nightmare.

“We're worried about the families' suffering, all those people who were on that plane are our among our closest friends. A city with 210 thousand inhabitants isn't that big, we know all of them. It's really painful,” the mayor said.

After the accident, the South American Football Confederation (Conmebol) postponed the match. A new date is to be fixed after December, 21.

The federal government dedicated two aircrafts of the Brazilian Airforce (FAB) to take authorities as well as doctors and the team's legal team to help the survivors and carry the victims' dead bodies.

Chartered plane

According to the Chapecó's mayor, the team traveled in a chartered plane to spare the athletes from fatigue. He said the aircraft had been used by Bolivia's and Argentina's football teams and that he had already flown with this crew, including the pilot, who was also the owner of the Venezuelan airline LaMia.

Buligon explained that the flight was planned to leave from Guarulhos but Brazil's National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC) rejected the flight request because the international regulation only allows chartered flights from the airline's country of origin.

Thereby, the team took a commercial flight from Guarulhos to Santa Cruz de La Sierra, in Bolivia, and there they took a chartered flight from LaMia to Medellín.

Translated by Fabrício Ferreira / Amarílis Anchieta