Private plane carrying four players and the president of Brazilian football club Palmas, crashed in the northern state of Tocantins on January 24, 2021.
Four players from the Palmas Futebol e Regatas club were on a flight to Goiania in Central Brazil for a match against Vila Nova in Copa Verde tournament. The twin-engine Beechcraft Baron crashed at the end of the runway during takeoff from the private airport of Luzimangues in the northern state of Tocantins, confirmed the club in a statement. The cause of the accident has not yet been confirmed.
Club President Lucas Meira and players Lucas Praxedes, Guilherme Noé, Ranule and Marcus Molinari, as well as the pilot were confirmed victims. The players were traveling separately from the team in a private plane as they had previously tested positive for COVID-19 and were on their last day of isolation, said a spokesperson from the Palmas Club.
Another Brazilian club, Chapecoense, which has lost 19 of its players in a plane crash in 2016, expressed their solidarity with Palmas Club. “Unfortunately, we know what this moment of pain is like and we wish that no other group had to feel the same,” Chapecoense said in a statement. “You won’t go through this alone.”
On November 28, 2016, 19 of the 22 players from the Chapecoense football team were killed in a plane crash on their way to the Copa Sudamericana final. The plane crashed into a mountainside in Medellin, Colombia, after running out of fuel.
