Plane crashes in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo, all 61 passengers die | WUWM 89.7 FM

Updated August 9, 2024 at 5:28 PM ET

VINHEDO, Brazil – A passenger plane carrying 61 people crashed into a gated community in Brazil’s São Paulo state on Friday, killing all aboard and leaving behind smoldering wreckage, officials and the airline said.

There was initially no official information about casualties at the crash site in the city of Vinhedo, about 80 kilometers northwest of Sao Paulo. However, witnesses on site said that there were no casualties among the residents of the neighborhood.

The airline VOEPASS said the ATR 72-500 twin-engine turboprop aircraft carrying 57 passengers and four crew was en route to Guarulhos International Airport in Sao Paulo when it crashed in Vinhedo. In an earlier statement, it said there were 58 passengers on board.

“The company regrets to announce that all 61 people on board Flight 2283 perished at the scene,” VOEPASS said in a statement. “At this time, VOEPASS is committed to providing full assistance to the families of the victims and is working effectively with the authorities to determine the causes of the accident.”

At an event in southern Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva asked the crowd to stand and observe a minute of silence as he announced the news.

Felipe Magalhaes Filho / AP

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AP

Firefighters, military police and the state’s civil defense sent teams to the scene. São Paulo’s Security Minister Guilherme Derrite spoke to reporters and confirmed that no survivors were found. He also said that the plane’s black box was found, apparently intact.

“I thought it was going to fall in our garden,” a local resident and witness who gave her name only as Ana Lucia told reporters near the crash site. “It was scary, but thank God there were no casualties among the locals. However, it seems that the 62 people on the plane were the real victims.”

A video obtained and verified by the Associated Press from a passerby shows at least two bodies scattered among burning wreckage.

Brazilian television station GloboNews showed aerial footage of an area where smoke was rising from the destroyed fuselage. Additional footage from GloboNews earlier showed the plane drifting downward in a flat spin.

According to Flightradar24, data sent by the plane indicated that it crashed in the last 60 seconds of the flight at a speed of 2,400 to 7,300 meters per minute.

The Brazilian Air Force’s Aircraft Accident Investigation and Prevention Center said in a statement that the pilots did not respond to calls from air traffic control in Sao Paulo, nor did they call for help or explain that they were operating in adverse weather conditions.

Authorities launch investigations

In a separate statement, Brazil’s federal police said they had already begun investigations and were sending specialists in plane crashes and disaster victim identification to assist.

VOEPASS employees at Guarulhos airport told the AP that the company was notifying the victims’ families and assisting them in a private room at the airport.

The aircraft’s manufacturer, the French-Italian ATR, said in a statement that it had been informed that an ATR 72-500 was involved in the accident. The company’s specialists were “fully committed to supporting both the investigation and the customer.”

The ATR 72 is generally used for shorter flights. The aircraft are built by a joint venture between Airbus in France and Leonardo SpA in Italy. Since the 1990s, crashes involving various models of the ATR 72 have claimed 470 lives, according to a database maintained by the Aviation Safety Network.

The Yeti Airlines crash that killed 72 people in Nepal in January 2023 involved an ATR 72-500. The cause was human error, an accidental positioning of both propellers in the feathering position.

Copyright: NPR