Brazil: 61 dead in plane crash near Sao Paulo

A plane crashed Friday in the Sao Paulo region, in the southeast of Brazil, killing all 61 people on board, without it being known for the moment the reasons for its impressive nose-dive into a residential area.

The plane, from the Franco-Italian manufacturer ATR, was carrying “57 passengers and four crew members”, according to the airline Voepass.

It was flying from Cascavel, in the state of Parana (south), to Guarulhos international airport in Sao Paulo. After a sudden fall, it crashed at 1:25 p.m. (4:25 p.m. GMT) in Vinhedo, a town of 76,000 inhabitants located some 80 kilometers northwest of Sao Paulo, causing fear among the residents.

“There were no survivors,” the Valinhos city hall, which participated in the rescue operations in the neighboring town of Vinhedo, said in an email to AFP.

Images broadcast by local media showed the plane as it fell at high speed, and others showed a long column of smoke rising from the site of the impact, a neighborhood where there were no casualties among the residents.

An investigation has been opened by Brazil's Center for Investigation and Prevention of Aeronautical Accidents (Cenipa) to determine the causes of the tragedy.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva declared three days of national mourning after the “tragic accident”.

– “Despair” –

Truck driver Martins Barbosa, 49, was working when he heard about the plane crash, which happened 150 metres from his home. “I thought it might have fallen on my house, with my son inside,” he told AFP, confiding his “despair” at the time, before being reassured.

“It was horrible, we saw the plane spin around and fall. It was God who saved us, because it was a close call that (the plane) fell on my house. I'm in shock, I can't stop shaking,” Edna Barbosa, a resident of Vinhedo, told Brazilian television SBT.

Another resident, Ricardo Rodrigues, told local channel Band News that he had “seen a lot of bodies on the ground, a lot” at the scene of the accident.

According to the Brazilian Air Force (FAB), the flight “proceeded normally until 1:20 p.m. (4:20 p.m. GMT).” But a minute later “the aircraft did not respond to calls” from the control tower, and “it also did not report being in an emergency situation or experiencing adverse weather conditions.”

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“The loss of contact with the radar took place at 1:22 p.m.”, added the FAB.

The aircraft is an ATR 72-500 model. The manufacturer, a subsidiary of Airbus and the Italian Leonardo, affirmed in a press release that “ATR specialists are fully committed to supporting the ongoing investigation”.

The black box has been found and will need to be analyzed.

– Identification of the victims –

The military police present on the scene reported that the fire caused by the fall of the plane had been brought under control. Teams of firefighters, civil defense and the air force were also deployed.

The recovery of the remains of the victims for their “identification” has begun and “will continue throughout the night,” announced on the scene to the press the governor of the state of Sao Paulo, Tarcisio de Freitas.

The bodies will be transferred to the main morgue of Sao Paulo, the economic capital of Brazil.

Voepass specified that “there is no confirmed information yet regarding the circumstances of the accident.”

According to the National Civil Aviation Agency, the aircraft complied with all the standards in force.

It had undergone “routine maintenance the night before” and left Ribeirao Preto (a city in the state of Sao Paulo where Voepass is headquartered) “without any technical problems,” the company's operations director, Marcel Moura, assured at a press conference.

The first flight of this plane made in France dates back to April 2010, according to the specialist website planespotters.net.

According to data from Cenipa, not including Friday's, since the beginning of the year Brazil has recorded 108 plane accidents resulting in 49 deaths. In the last ten years, 746 people have died in 1,665 accidents in this country of gigantic dimensions.

Aerial view of the site of the plane crash in which 61 people died in Vinhedo, in the province of Sao Paulo, Brazil, on August 9, 2024. © AFP – Miguel SCHINCARIOL

En 2007, an Airbus A320 from the Brazilian company TAM missed its landing at Congonhas airport in Sao Paulo and crashed into a cargo ship, killing all 187 people on board and 12 people on the ground.

Two years later, an Air France Airbus A330-230, flying between Rio de Janeiro and Paris, disappeared over the Atlantic in a zone of turbulence with 228 people on board.

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