A trace that disappears on a monitor, unanswered calls that multiply, and a plane that crashes in the middle of the night with a Brazilian soccer team inside. A year ago, Yaneth Molina knew before anyone else what happened to Chapecoense.
However, this 47-year-old Colombian, with delicate gestures and speech, took a while to see the images of one of the tragedies that has made soccer cry outside the stadiums.
Molina was in the radar room of Rionegro airport, which serves the city of Medellin, on November 28, 2016.
She was the air traffic controller who that night unsuccessfully tried to guide flight 2933 that brought the Chapecoense team to play their first international final in Colombia against Atletico Nacional for the Copa Sudamericana.
But she found out later, she says to AFP in her apartment in Medellin.
Initially, she wasn't supposed to be there, as she explains in the book "I also survived," which she wrote with her husband Carlos Acosta, who is also an air traffic controller.
Also read: Threats made against air traffic controller who handled Chapecoense plane emergency
Molina, with 22 years of experience, changed shifts because she wanted to attend to some family matters. That night, fate forced her to watch as the lives of 71 people who died in the LaMia airline plane crash disappeared.
"The last thing I asked (the crew) was altitude. They told me: 9,000 feet. I made a new call but they didn't answer anymore."
Keeping control
Tears almost came back, but Molina recovers. There was no more communication with the pilot, the trace also disappeared definitively from the screen, other planes did not report any sightings, but still the protocols say that one must wait, that it is still too early to talk about an accident.
"In this case, it was (a) five-minute (time) to consider if the aircraft had to land."
More calls came without response from the radar room. "I couldn't believe it (...) all I did was to sigh and continue managing the rest of the aircraft, clearing the airspace because I already had many on my frequency, under my responsibility."
Chaotic, confusing, fragmented, the news was already on the lips of the world. At around 10:10 p.m., the plane with the Chapecoense team belly-landed on Cerro Gordo, in the municipality of La Ceja, 20 km from the airport where it was supposed to land.
Of the 77 occupants, 71 died, and six survived. Investigations indicate that the aircraft was overweight and did not have enough fuel, and it did not explicitly report that situation to the controller.
Without falling into a panic, Molina had to continue in control until the end of her shift at six in the morning on November 29.
"In the early morning, I saw the image on television, imagine the great pain I felt," Molina emphasizes.
With the first images, the details also arrived. The flight she tried to guide was for a soccer team she didn't know. "Then I find out who they were, how many were going, and you start to hear all that... it was very painful."
Seventh survivor
Even though she wasn't on the plane and didn't know any of the victims, Molina describes herself as a survivor.
On November 30, a recording of the radar room, with her voice, was leaked to the press, followed by an internal message in which she affirms that she did everything "humanly possible and technically obligatory" to preserve the lives of the LaMia occupants.
But some misunderstood her calm performance and attributed to her giving preference to another aircraft that had also requested priority landing due to fuel.
Also read: Analysis reveals five faults of the LaMia pilot in his dialogue with the control tower
The truth is that the "Chapecoense controller," as she came to be known, was responsible for five more flights that night.
Ignoring the instructions, she assures, that the LaMia flight dangerously descended over two aircraft with more than 300 passengers, without specifying its real situation, Molina decided to save them.
"There were 71 victims, but it could have been much worse. I had to make very quick decisions to safeguard the lives of the other aircraft," she recalls.
Many did not understand it that way and harassed her on social media and even made threatening calls. They said that "I had responsibility in the plane crash (...), that because I was a woman, I didn't want to help them, or because I didn't like soccer."
She fell into an attack of frustration and melancholy from which she recovered weeks later with the help of psychologists and her family.
Today, one year later, Molina emphasizes that she did a good job that night. (I)