A passenger plane crashed into a gated residential community in Brazil’s Sao Paulo state Friday, killing all 61 people aboard and leaving a smoldering wreck, officials and the airline said.
Officials gave no immediate word of any casualties at the site of the crash in the city of Vinhedo, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Sao Paulo, but witnesses at the scene said there were no victims among residents of the neighborhood.
The airline VOEPASS said that its plane, an ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop, was headed for Sao Paulo’s international airport Guarulhos with 57 passengers and 4 crew members aboard when it crashed in Vinhedo. It provided a flight manifest with passenger names, but not their nationalities. A prior statement had said there were 58 passengers.
BREAKING: Media reports that a Voepass ATR-72 has crashed in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Unverified video shows the aircraft spinning out of control while enroute to Guarulhos, Brazil. More details to follow. pic.twitter.com/1X0QVdGZ0Q
— Breaking Aviation News & Videos (@aviationbrk) August 9, 2024
“The company regrets to inform that all 61 people on board flight 2283 died at the site,” VOEPASS said in a statement. “At this time, VOEPASS is prioritizing provision of unrestricted assistance to the victims’ families and effectively collaborating with authorities to determine the causes of the accident.”
It was the deadliest airline crash since January 2023, when 72 people died on board a Yeti Airlines plane in Nepal that stalled and crashed while making its landing approach. That plane also was an ATR 72, and the final report blamed pilot error.
At an event in southern Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva asked the crowd to stand and observe a minute of silence as he shared the news.
The state’s firefighters, military police and civil defense authority dispatched teams to the location. Sao Paulo’s public security secretary Guilherme Derrite spoke to reporters and confirmed that no survivors were found. He also said the plane’s black box was found, apparently intact.
Source: AP