CNN
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A passenger plane carrying 61 people crashed outside Sao Paulo on Friday afternoon, killing all on board, according to a statement released by airline Vobas.
Dramatic footage circulating on social media showed the plane crashing and its fuselage destroyed in flames on the ground.
“The company regrets to report that all 61 people on board Flight 2283 died at the scene,” Voepass said in a statement, revising the death toll from an initial estimate of 62. The airline said there were 57 passengers and four crew members on board.
Airline officials said all passengers had Brazilian documents, although it was not yet clear if they had dual citizenship.
Flight tracking data showed the ATR 72-500, a twin-engine turboprop plane, plummeting 17,000 feet in one minute, but it’s still unclear why.
Social media videos of the crash showed the plane spinning out of the sky before crashing into the ground, leaving neighbors screaming in fear. Another video showed the wreckage of the plane burning on the ground. No one was injured at the stadium, city officials told CNN.
According to Flightradar24 data, the flight took off from Cascavel in the Brazilian state of Paraná and was en route to the city of Guarulhos in the state of São Paulo.
It started losing altitude about a minute and a half before the crash. The plane, which was flying at an altitude of 17,000 feet till 1:21 pm local time, fell about 250 feet in 10 seconds. It then climbed about 400 feet in eight seconds.
Eight seconds later, it was lost below 2,000 feet. Then, in about a minute, it began a rapid descent — losing about 17,000 feet in a minute.
The last data transmission from the aircraft was at 1:22pm local time.
Voepass CEO Eduardo Busch told a press conference that there is no information yet on the cause of the accident.
“The whole team is talented,” Bush said.
“We are awaiting access to all communications between the pilot and the control tower to gain a broader understanding of what happened.”
Bush said the plane has two black boxes — devices that store flight data, built to withstand accidents — and two highly qualified labs to analyze them.
“On the one hand, it is possible to recover data from the recorder, but on the other hand, due to the severity of the accident, the recorders have been damaged, making the recorded data inaccessible.” Bush said.
A medical team is onsite and working to identify the victims, many of whom were burned too badly to be visually identified, Sao Paulo’s Defense Secretary Guilherme Territ told a news conference.
Officials said the fire caused by the accident has been brought under control. “The bodies of the victims are being transported to the IML (Forensic Institute) in Campinas for legal proceedings,” Vinhedo City Hall said in a statement.
Families have been asked to share the victims’ medical records, such as “radiological, medical and/or dental examinations,” to help identify the bodies.
Interrupting a speech at an afternoon naval event to address the crash, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called for a minute’s silence to mark the apparent deaths of the plane’s passengers and crew.
I would like everyone to stand up and observe a moment of silence because a plane has crashed in the city of Vinhedo.
The President then announced three days of mourning for the deceased.
Voepass officials said the company spent the afternoon providing support to victims’ families by securing hotels and psychologists.
A resident videotaped the aftermath of a plane crash into her neighbor outside Sao Paulo, telling CNN’s Julia Vargas Jones that she was eating lunch in her kitchen when she saw the plane go down.
A passenger plane carrying 62 people crashed in Brazil on August 9, 2024.
She crouched down in fear and began to pray, calling it a “moment of panic” for the entire city. Private roads leading to the property are now closed to everyone, including residents, and first responders are in the area, he said.
A Brazilian air force team is waiting to investigate the cause of the crash, Vinhedo City Hall said in a statement Friday.
Brigadier Marcelo Moreno, head of Brazil’s air accidents agency CENIPA, told a press conference that the flight crew had not declared an emergency before the crash. “Initially, there was no information about the plane, that the plane was in any kind of emergency,” he told a press conference.
Voepass CEO Busch said the airline will work closely with CENIPA to investigate the accident.
According to registration data from the Brazilian Aeronautical Registry, the Voepass aircraft was manufactured in 2010 and purchased by the airline in September 2022.
According to its registration data, the aircraft was “denied operation for air taxi”. But at this time it is not clear why or when that decision was made.
CNN has reached out to Brazil’s Civil Aviation Authority for more details on that commitment.
ATR, the plane’s manufacturer, says it is aware of the crash and is cooperating with investigators.
“What we can say at this time is that ATR has been informed of an accident involving an ATR 72-500 in Vinhedo, Brazil. Our first thoughts are with all individuals affected by this incident. ATR experts are fully engaged in supporting both the investigation and the customer,” the statement said.
Video of Brazilian plane falling from sky, expert says what happened
Aviation experts who spoke to CNN said the ATR 72s built by the European Union are a thing of the past. At least 15 incidents have occurred Due to this, passengers lost their lives Includes ATR turboprops registered worldwide.
Some missed the tragic flight on Friday. One person who missed the flight told Brazilian news agency Globo that at least 10 people waited at the wrong gate and missed the flight before takeoff.
“They told me, sir, you are not boarding this flight because we have already exceeded the boarding limit. I put some pressure on them — ‘Mister, put me on this plane and I’ve got to go’ — and then he said, ‘There’s no way, what can I do, rebook your ticket,'” the man told Globo.
Realizing they were at the wrong gate, passengers begged airport staff to let them board the plane, but were told they couldn’t. “My legs tremble; God only knows how I feel,” the man said after discovering the plane had crashed. “Thank God we didn’t get on that plane.”
CNN’s Isa Soares, Tatiana Arias, Pam Boykoff, Marcelo Medeiros and Lex Harvey contributed to this report.
