Normally pilots will tell air traffic control if they're tight on fuel and then be brought in to the airport ahead of other planes (had a pilot tell me this directly), so maybe the gauges were off or something?Maximus_Meridius said:
Oh I know, but my point was they may not have had enough fuel capacity for said buffer. I don't know. I'm not sure if there are regulations that apply to how much buffer you're required to have for an aircraft in Latin America.
Quote:
The team flew from Sao Paulo to Santa Cruz on a commercial flight, then switched to the chartered aircraft.
Brazil's O Globo reported that because of a delayed departure, a refuelling stop in Cobija - on the border between Brazil and Bolivia - was abandoned because the airport did not operate at night.
The pilot had the option to refuel in Bogota, but headed straight to Medellin.
"The pilot was the one who took the decision," Gustavo Vargas, a representative of Lamia, which operated the plane, was quoted as saying in Bolivian newspaper Pagina Siete. "He thought the fuel would last."
Approaching Medellin, the pilot asked for permission to land because of fuel problems, without making a formal distress call.
But another plane from airline VivaColombia had priority because it had already suffered a fuel leak, the co-pilot of another plane in the air at the time said.
