VINHEDO, Brazil (AP) — Brazilian authorities on Saturday tried to determine the cause of a plane crash that occurred the previous day in Sao Paulo state. All 62 passengers and crew members died.
The plane, an ATR72 twin-engine turboprop operated by local airline Voepass, In Sao Paulo The plane landed at Guarulhos International Airport and crashed in the city of Vinhedo with 58 passengers and 4 crew on board.
The airline initially said there were 62 passengers on the plane, then revised that number to 61, then raised the figure again early Saturday after it emerged a passenger named Constantino Te Maia was not on the original list.
Images recorded by an eyewitness Footage shows the plane spinning horizontally before plummeting to the ground inside a gated community, leaving the aircraft engulfed in flames and burned. Residents said no one was injured on the ground.
Rain poured down in the cold Southern Hemisphere winter as rescue workers pulled the first bodies from the scene, and some apartment residents silently left to spend the night elsewhere.
It was the world’s deadliest aircraft crash since a January 2023 crash in Nepal that killed 72 people on board a Yeti Airlines plane. The plane stalled on approach and crashedThe plane was also an ATR72, and the final report attributed the accident to pilot error.
The meteorological center of Brazilian television station Globo said on Friday it had “confirmed the possibility of icing in the Vinhedo region,” and local media reported that experts had pointed to icing as a possible cause of the crash.
On October 31, 1994, an American Eagle ATR 72-200 crashed in what the National Transportation Safety Board determined was caused by ice accumulation while the aircraft was turning in a holding pattern. The aircraft rolled over at an altitude of approximately 8,000 feet and struck the ground, killing all 68 people on board. The Federal Aviation Administration issued operating procedures for the ATR and similar aircraft instructing pilots not to use the autopilot in icing conditions.
But Brazilian aviation expert Lito Sousa warned that weather conditions alone may not explain why the plane went down in the way it did on Friday.
“When you analyze an aircraft accident based solely on images, you can come to the wrong conclusions about the cause,” Souza told The Associated Press by phone. “But you see the plane losing support and horizontal speed. In this flat spin, there is no way to regain control of the plane.”
Guilherme Delite, head of Sao Paulo state’s public security department, told reporters in Vinhedo on Friday that the plane’s black boxes had been recovered and were apparently in good condition.
Vorpass operations director Marcelo Moura told reporters on Friday night that although ice was forecast, it would be tolerable for aircraft to fly.
Similarly, Lt. Col. Carlos Henrique Baldi of the Brazilian Air Force’s Air Accident Investigation and Prevention Center told reporters at a late afternoon press conference that it was still too early to say whether ice was the cause of the crash.
“The plane is approved for flying in severe icing conditions in several countries, including countries where the ice is more severe than in ours,” said Baldi, who heads the center’s research department.
The center said in an earlier statement that the plane’s pilot had not requested a rescue or mentioned operating in bad weather, and there was no evidence he had tried to contact air traffic control at the local airport, Ports and Airports Minister Silvio Costa Filho told reporters in Vinhedo on Friday night.
Brazil’s federal police said in a statement that they had launched their own investigation and had dispatched experts to investigate plane crashes and identify the victims.
The Sao Paulo state government said Saturday morning that 21 bodies had been retrieved from the scene, two of which had already been identified. Local fire department spokesman Maicon Cristo told reporters that winches were being used to remove parts of the plane’s wreckage from the ground.
“In the midst of the destruction of the plane, they found what appeared to be a body and rescue teams arrived on the scene. They took photographs and gathered as much evidence as they could from the victims to allow for the most accurate identification,” Crist said.
French-Italian aircraft maker ATR said in a statement that it had received reports that the accident involved its ATR 72-500 aircraft and that its experts were “doing everything they can to assist both the investigation and our customer.”
The ATR 72 is generally used for short-haul flights. The plane is manufactured by a joint venture between France’s Airbus and Italy’s Leonardo SpA.
Accidents involving various models of the ATR72 have killed 470 people since the 1990s. Aviation Safety Network Database.
Brazilian authorities began transferring bodies to morgues on Friday and urged families of victims to bring any medical, x-ray and dental test results they had to help identify the bodies. Blood tests were also being conducted to confirm identity.
Airports Minister Costa Filho said the Air Force Centre would also launch a criminal investigation into the accident.
“We will investigate this incident so that it is fully explained to the Brazilian people,” he said.
___
Sa Pessoa reported from Sao Paulo and Koenig from Dallas.