Survivor Of Brazilian Soccer Team Plane Crash That Killed 71 Recounts Tragedy

A survivor of a plane crash that killed 71 people credited God with saving her life. Ximena Suarez, 28, was a flight attendant on board a plane carrying the Brazilian soccer team Chapecoense when it crashed into the jungle in Colombia last year.

LaMia Flight 2933 was in route to a soccer game in November 2016 when it slammed into a hillside in Colombia. Suarez was one of only six people on board the flight of 81 people to survive the crash. Three soccer players – Jakson Follmann, Helio Neto and Alan Ruschel – as well as crew member Erwin Tumiri and journalist Rafael Henzel, also lived. Suarez, a mother of two, moved to the back of the plane as it began to crash, according to reports.

“Some people tell me, ‘luckily you saved yourself,’” she told the Spanish newspaper El Pais, according to The Sun. “For me, it is not luck, it is the will of God.”

She also credited her survival to the fact that she was sitting down. Suarez said until the time of the crash, it was a routine flight.

“We didn’t have any idea,” she said in an interview. “If I’d known, I would have acted differently. No one knows how they’re going to act in an emergency, no one is prepared. As cabin crew we trained, we did a simulation, but when it arrives it’s difficult.”

She recalled where she was after she had brought the pilots’ dinner.

“It was a really normal flight until we started going around and one of the passengers asked why,” she said, according to Bleacher Report. “I wanted to ask the pilots about it, so I reached for the phone and the lights went off. I had the phone in my hand and there was no shouting or anything. Silence. Then came the impact. The only noise was after we hit due to the screaming.”

An investigation into the crash was finished less than a month after the plane crashed and found human error was to blame. Suarez herself has undergone a lengthy recovery and started a GoFundMe page in order to pay for some of the treatment. Since the crash, she has struggled to sleep, she told El Pais.

“Sometimes at night I get nightmares,” she said. “I can’t sleep. I try to leave the pills, but I can’t because I wake up in the night, so I have to continue taking them. It’s just one of those things, but I know I have to be strong.”