São Paulo, Brazil – Rescue teams completed the recovery of all 62 bodies from the Voepass plane crash in Vinhedo, southeast Brazil, on Saturday night. The ATR-72 aircraft was carrying 58 passengers and four crew members and no one survived the accident.
Initially, Voepass had reported 61 victims, but later they corrected the number to 62 when confirming that there was a name missing from the passenger list. The plane was heading from Cascavel, in the south of the country, to São Paulo and crashed while it was already descending, a few minutes away from São Paulo International Airport.
The recovery of the bodies took almost 24 hours. They have already been taken to São Paulo’s Institute of Forensic Medicine (IML), where the victims will be identified. As there was an explosion after the aircraft hit the ground, the Federal Police must resort to other forms of identification, such as fingerprints, dental records and DNA.
The families of all the victims are gathered in a hotel in São Paulo, where they are receiving psychological support and where they also collected DNA to help recognize the bodies. Family members are avoiding talking to the local press, but everyone reports the pain and sadness of losing their loved ones in such a tragic way.
Most of the victims were from Cascavel, where a collective funeral will be held in the coming days. But there is still no date for the bodies to be released for funeral and burial. At the scene of the accident, the rescue teams have already finished work after removing the bodies and recovering the plane’s black boxes and engines.
The black boxes were taken to Brasília, the country’s capital, where the Brazilian Air Force (FAB) investigation center is located. It is there that the investigation will be carried out to determine the causes of the accident, with support from the Federal Police. According to the FAB, the aircraft did not issue any emergency alert before the crash.
Read more: Plane with 61 people crashes in Brazil, no survivors: local authorities
In addition to supporting families, investigations focus on reconstructing the last moments of the flight, which involves analyzing the plane’s black boxes. The National Civil Aviation Agency (Anac), a federal government agency, confirmed that both the aircraft and the crew were regular and able to carry out the flight.
Even so, the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Labor will also investigate Voepass to identify the working conditions of the crew and whether any labor legislation was breached by the airline, impacting the accident or not.
Despite the tragedy, Voepass continues its operations and flights take off and land normally in the country. According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, there is no need, at this point, to suspend the airline’s activities. The families are also receiving legal support and have already had meetings with prosecutors and Voepass to discuss the case.
The last accident in Brazilian commercial aviation occurred 17 years ago. On July 17, 2007, a Latam Airlines plane coming from Porto Alegre, in southern Brazil, overran the runway during landing at Congonhas Airport in São Paulo and crashed into a Latam warehouse. All 187 people on board and 12 on the ground were killed.
