The plane of the Venezuelan company Emtrasur took off on June 8 from Buenos Aires (Argentina) without the necessary fuel to fly to Caracas (Venezuela), where he intended. The crew aboard the Boeing 747 then presented the Ezeiza Airport control tower with a flight plan to make a stopover in Carrasco, Montevideo. A day earlier, the Argentine companies YPF and Shell did not allow him to refuel in the Argentine capital.
Uruguay rejected the request of the Venezuelan-Iranian crew. The decision was made by Defense Minister Javier García, in four minutesafter a call he received from his Interior counterpart, Luis Alberto Heber, who had been informed by the Paraguayan intelligence services that the country was dealing with a Venezuelan firm with connections to Iran and that both the aircraft and part of its crew , had a history of logistical support to organizations considered “terrorist” internationally such as the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the al-Quds Force.
Without success, the 300-ton aircraft – which was waiting with trajectories in circles over the Río de la Plata – returned to Ezeiza. Since then, she has been held and the Argentine Justice is investigating him, as well as the five Iranians and 14 Venezuelans he had on board. The Venezuelan government confirmed that the plane landed with 17 thousand liters of fuel, which he considered insufficient. In a release of June 16 said that it is “well below what is recommended by Emtrasur’s Standardized Operational Procedure, which is established at 20,000 liters”.
By international regulations, no aircraft can take off from an airport without certain fuel handling safety conditions.
“In no way was the aircraft at risk,” he assured The Observer this Wednesday the commander in chief of the Uruguayan Air Force, Luis Heber De León. “The fuel calculations when the individual (pilot) leaves, which is a sworn statement, says that it is in international conditions. It is certainly not true that he had a risk. If she had that risk, she could not have left, ”he insisted..
international security
The aircraft must have conditions to leave originhave the ability to get to the point where he anticipated and alternate for any incident, plus 45 minutes of reserve, De León explained.
In this case, if the Boeing 747 left Ezeiza and took 36 minutes to Montevideoneeded those 36 minutes of flight, plus the fuel to go to the alternate (in this case 36 more minutes), plus the 45 minutes of reserve required by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
If the pilot declares in flight that he has a fuel emergency, international law requires that aircraft land at the closest place, which in this case was Montevideo, where he was going.
This was not the case. the iranian pilot Gholamreza Ghasemi –indicted– “He did not state in any way, because there are the recordings, that he had an emergency” with the fuel, exposed the commander. And he added: “The man was in normal operating condition. The aircraft left with the necessary fuel to fulfill its mission according to the norm. In addition, when the pilot is told that he cannot enter Uruguayan airspace, by not declaring a fuel risk, he returns to the point. There was no risk of any kind.”.
Finally, De León assured that “if (the pilot) had declared a fuel risk, he would have landed here (in Carrasco)”, but “a fine would have been applied” when verifying that this problem did not occur.
In his response to the statement from the government of Nicolás Maduro, the secretary of the Presidency, Alvaro Delgadoaffirmed this Saturday that the Uruguayan government made the decision “ensuring that (the aircraft) had enough fuel so that there was no other type of risk.”
Venezuela denounced before the international aeronautical community that the “regrettable action (Uruguayan) could have caused a tragedy, human losses and damages for both nations”. For the Venezuelan authorities there was an “irresponsible handling” of the situation, and it was a “terrible fact”, he qualified.
