Yes, it cross-conflicted the pilot by being the owner. As I understood it from Brazilian reports, the plane took off late because the incoming flight had arrived late. The pilot had previously scheduled a fueling stop, but opted against it because the airport would close by the time their plane would arrive. They would have to wait until it opened again the next day to refuel and take off.

The conflict is that charter airlines' models in South America are often tied to availability and price, but also on-time performance. It doesn't help the chartering passengers if you can't make it on-time. The pilot/owner stretched the plane in an attempt to make it and ensure that he would have future business. These people all died needlessly.

Yes, he was

They're still flying in the US.

I don't think that they are banned because they're too old. We have "much" older planes flying around without issue here in the US.
You don't see many because all the airlines that fly planes in the US have retired their fleets of this aircraft type.

Hi, the RJ85 doesn't have a RAT.

^^^ THIS! that last paragraph is what all pilots need to understand and take to heart.

IMHO if the craft is in danger because of low fuel you declare an emergency anyways and take your medicine when you’re on the ground. Its better to have a suspended license than to crash.

Notice the crash site has no sign of fire damage. Fuel exhaustion, has to be high on the scale of potential causes.

hey sparkie, in the second picture showing the hill you will notice that the first tree's hit were barkless indicating more of a flat impact and not much forward energy, just saying.

The flight map shows they circle their Destination for 30 minutes prior to landing. Not sure about the fuel burn, but they obviously had enough to get there. I suspect they were trying to Troubleshoot the electrical and they lost track of the fuel. The fuel gauge should have worked under battery power, so they at least should have had that and basic instruments. I do believe that they did run out of fuel that ultimately caused their crash, but I think that we can also say that fuel probably was not the major cause because circling for 30 minutes they could have declared a fuel emergency and landed anyway. Another factor, keep in mind that this was a charter flight, meaning they probably had the same flight crew. they had a stop over prior to this flight. We could be looking at an Exhausted Crew that failed on CRM and I sure hope they do not tie in Drugs and/or Alcohol. I think it is going to be quite some time before we know the final outcome of this one... there is a lot of evidence to go through. I am not sure where, but I did read that they found the flight recorders in near perfect shape so that should help them out.

Keep in mind that a 17.7 year old plane (regional) does an average of 8 flight legs per day would be about 52,000 Flight cycles, which in the US would be mandatory parked at 60,000 Cycles and for average flight time would be over 60,000 Flight Hours which is mandatory parking in the US. I would consider this a very old a/c. A lot of the planes that I worked on that were brand new in 1999 are now sitting in the airplane grave yard parked due to being timed out! Keep in mind that you can only blow up the same balloon so many times before it pops!

And in South America it is Futebol

Interesting... Never knew that.. Thanks for the info