São Paulo, Brazil – A plane with 61 people crashed in the city of Vinhedo, in southwestern Brazil, this Friday. The plane, operated by Voepass Airlines, was en route from Cascavel, in the south of the country, to São Paulo and was already in its descent procedure at the time of the crash.
According to Voepass, there were 57 passengers and four crew members on board. No one survived. The aircraft, a passenger turboprop model ATR-72, crashed in the backyard of a house in a residential condominium. No residents of the area were injured.
Many videos of the accident were shared on social media, showing the moment when the plane plummeted from the sky.
The Federal Police and the Air Force’s accident investigation agency have already begun investigations to determine the causes of the accident. Voepass reported that they also do not know what caused the plane to crash. Both black boxes have been recovered at the scene.
What is known so far is that the pilots did not communicate with the control tower to report any issues with the aircraft. They did not report any emergency situation, and the aircraft simply lost contact.
According to the flight tracking platform Flightradar, in the final minutes of the flight, the aircraft made a sharp turn and lost 4,000 meters of altitude in about a minute. The speed of this descent was 440 km/h.
The National Civil Aviation Agency (Anac), a federal government agency, stated that the aircraft was in good standing and authorized to operate the flight. The Ministry of Ports and Airports has created a crisis center to manage the situation and, most importantly, to assist the families of the victims.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva declared three days of national mourning and expressed his sorrow over the accident. “A very sad piece of news. My deepest sympathy to the families and friends of the victims,” said Lula.
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.
