Brazilian passenger plane crash outside São Paulo kills 62

CNN

By AnneClaire Stapleton, Tara John, Duarte Mendonça, Paul P. Murphy, Mohammed Tawfeeq and Stefano Pozzebon, CNN

Vinhedo, Brazil (CNN) — A passenger plane carrying 62 people crashed outside São Paulo on Friday afternoon, killing everyone on board.

Dramatic footage circulating on social media showed the plane’s fall and its destroyed fuselage in flames on the ground.

Regional airline Voepass revised the number of fatalities up to 62 from 61 after confirming another passenger was on board. It earlier said that there were 57 passengers and four crew members on board.

All of the passengers had Brazilian documents, airline officials said. Portugal’s foreign ministry said on Saturday that one Portuguese citizen traveling on the plane died in the crash. It is unclear if that passenger or any other victims had dual citizenship.

Flight tracking data shows that the ATR 72-500, a twin-engine turboprop plane, dropped 17,000 feet in just one minute, but it is not yet clear why.

Social media videos of the crash showed the plane spiraling out of the sky before hitting the ground as people in the neighborhood shouted in fear. Another video showed the wreckage of the plane in flames on the ground. No one on the ground was hurt, city officials told CNN.

The flight left Cascavel, in the Brazilian state of Parana, and was en route to Guarulhos, in São Paulo state, when it lost signal shortly before 1:30 p.m. (12:30 p.m. ET), according to Flightradar24 data.

It began losing altitude a minute and a half before crashing. The plane had been cruising at 17,000 feet until 1:21 p.m., when it dropped approximately 250 feet in 10 seconds. It then climbed approximately 400 feet in about eight seconds.

Eight seconds later, it lost just under 2,000 feet. Then, in approximately one minute, it began rapidly descending – losing roughly 17,000 feet in just one minute.

The last data transmission from the plane was at 1:22 p.m.

Luiz Augusto De Oliveira described the moment the plane struck part of his property. “The plane crashed at my house,” he told Reuters. “There were three people in the house – me, my wife and the maid – we are all fine.”

He continued, “We thought it was a helicopter in breakdown due to the noise … and suddenly we saw the aircraft exploding in the garage of my house.”

Cause not yet known

There is no information yet on what caused the crash, Voepass CEO Eduardo Busch told a press conference.

“The entire crew was competent,” Busch said. “We are waiting for access to all communications between the pilot and the control tower to have a broader understanding of what happened.”

Busch said the plane had two black boxes – devices that store flight data which are built to withstand crashes – and that there are two highly qualified laboratories available to analyze them.

Authorities have so far retrieved 24 bodies from the crash site, Vinhedo mayor Darío Pacheco told a press conference on Saturday.

Of those, two victims – the pilot and the co-pilot – have been preliminarily identified based on visual recognition, he said, who added that the aircraft’s black boxes had been recovered in working order and sent to Brasilia for analysis.

Earlier, Sao Paulo fire brigade spokesperson Maycon Cristo said all the victims were still seated during the crash and no bodies were ejected from the site due to the plane crashing flat onto ground, Cristo said.

“Officials are working row by row (of the crashed aircraft) to retrieve and identify the bodies,” he told CNN, adding that the bodies are in such conditions that it’s difficult to identify.

The recovery team is working from the cockpit and moving towards the tail, where the forensic work will be harder due to the damage caused by the fire following the crash, according to the spokesperson.

In order to help identify bodies, families have been asked to share medical documentation of the victims “such as radiological, medical and/or dental exams,” said a statement released by the government of the state of São Paulo.

Interrupting a speech at an afternoon naval event to address the crash, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called for a minute of silence to mark the apparent deaths of the flight’s passengers and crew.

“I would like everyone to stand up so that we can observe a minute of silence because a plane has just crashed in the city of Vinhedo… and it appears they all died,” he said, in a video of his statement shared on X.

The president later declared three days of mourning for the victims.

Voepass officials said that the company spent the afternoon securing hotels and psychologists for the victims’ families and providing them with support.

One resident recorded video of the aftermath of a plane crashing into her neighbor’s house outside of São Paulo, telling CNN she was eating lunch in her kitchen when she saw the plane going down.

She ducked down in terror and started praying, she said, calling it a “moment of panic” for the whole city. Private roads leading up to the properties are now closed off to everyone, including residents, she said, and first responders are in the area.

An investigation begins

Vinhedo City Hall said in the Friday statement that it is waiting for the Brazil Air Force team to start investigating the cause of the crash.

Brigadier Marcelo Moreno, who heads Brazil’s aviation accidents agency CENIPA, told a press conference that aircraft crew had not communicated an emergency prior to the crash. “Preliminarily, we have this information that there was no information about the aircraft, that the aircraft was in any type of emergency whatsoever,” he told a press conference.

Busch, the Voepass CEO, said the airline will work closely with CENIPA to investigate the crash.

According to registration data from the Brazilian Aeronautical Registry, the Voepass airplane was manufactured in 2010 and purchased by the airline in September 2022.

The aircraft was “denied operation for air taxi,” according to its registration data. But it’s unclear why or when that determination was made at this time.

CNN has reached out to Brazil’s aviation authority for more details about that determination.

ATR, the plane’s manufacturer, says it was aware of an accident and is working to support investigators.

“What we can say at this point in time is that ATR has been informed that an accident occurred in Vinhedo, Brazil involving an ATR 72-500. Our first thoughts are with all the individuals affected by this event. The ATR specialists are fully engaged to support both the investigation and the customer,” the statement said.

Flight experts speaking to CNN said ATR 72s, which are constructed by a European consortium, have a checkered past. There have been at least 15 incidents resulting in passenger deaths involving ATR turboprops recorded around the world.

Passengers who missed flight ‘thank God’

Some people missed the tragic flight on Friday. A man who missed the flight told Brazilian news outlet Globo that at least 10 people were waiting at the wrong gate causing them to miss the flight.

“They said to me, mister, you’re not getting on this plane because we’re already past the boarding limit. I even pressured them a little – ‘mister, put me on this plane, I have to go’ – then he said, ‘There’s no way, what I can do is rebook your ticket,’” the man told Globo.

When they realized they were at the wrong gate, the passengers begged the airport employees to let them board the plane but were told they could not. “My legs are shaking; only God knows how I’m feeling,” the man said after finding out the plane had crashed. “Thank God, we didn’t get on that plane.”

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CNN’s Isa Soares, Tatiana Arias, Pamela Boykoff, Marcelo Medeiros, Julia Vargas Jones, Lex Harvey, Stefano Pozzebon, Mia Alberti, Marcia Reverdosa and Vasco Cotovio contributed to this report.