Brazilian plane crash outside São Paulo kills 61, says airline

(CNN) — A passenger plane carrying 61 people crashed outside São Paulo on Friday afternoon, killing everyone on board, according to a statement issued by airline Voepass.

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

“The company regrets to inform that all 61 people on board flight 2283 died at the scene,” Voepass said in a statement, revising the death toll down from an initial assessment of 62 dead. There were 57 passengers and four crew members on board, according to the company.

All of the passengers had Brazilian documents, airline officials said, though it’s not yet clear if any 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. local time (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. local time, 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. local time.

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.

“On one hand, it is possible to retrieve data from the recorder, but on the other hand, there is a chance that, due to the severity of the accident, the recorders were damaged, making it impossible to access the recorded data,” Busch said.

A medical team is onsite and working to identify the victims, many of whom are too badly burned for visual identification, São Paolo’s Security Secretary Guilherme Derrite said at a press conference.

Officials say the fire outbreaks from the crash are under control. “The bodies of the victims are being taken to the IML (Legal Medical Institute) in Campinas for legal proceedings,” Vinhedo City Hall said in a statement.

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’s Julia Vargas Jones 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 and missed the flight before it took off.

“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.”

CNN’s Isa Soares, Tatiana Arias, Pam Boykoff, Marcelo Medeiros and Lex Harvey contributed to this report.

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