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Police guard the gated community where a plane crashed in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo state, Brazil, Friday, Aug. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Andre Penner) -
Police patrol the street leading to the gated community where a plane crashed in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo state, Brazil, Friday, Aug. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Andre Penner) -
Police stand along the street leading to the gated community where a plane crashed in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo state, Brazil, Friday, Aug. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Andre Penner) -
Location map showing the departure, destination and crash sites of a Brazilian commercial airliner that crashed on Friday, August 9, 2024. (AP Digital Embed)
VINHEDO, Brazil (AP) — A passenger plane carrying 61 people crashed Friday in a gated community in Brazil’s Sao Paulo state, killing all aboard and leaving smoldering wreckage, officials and the airline said.
Officials have not yet released information about casualties at the scene of the crash in the city of Vinhedo, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of Sao Paulo. However, witnesses at the scene said there were no casualties among residents of the neighborhood.
Airline VOEPASS said the ATR 72-500 twin-engine turboprop was en route to Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos International Airport with 57 passengers and four crew on board when it crashed in Vinhedo. An earlier statement had said there were 58 passengers.
“The company regrets to report that all 61 people on board Flight 2283 died on the spot,” VOEPASS said in a statement. “At this time, VOEPASS’s priority is to provide unrestricted assistance to the families of the victims and to cooperate effectively with the authorities to determine the causes of the accident.”
At an event in southern Brazil, the president said Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva He asked the crowd to stand and observe a minute of silence as he delivered the news.
The fire department, military police and state civil defense authority sent teams to the scene. Speaking to reporters, Sao Paulo Public Security Secretary Guilherme Derrite confirmed that no survivors had been found. He also said that the plane’s black box had been found, apparently intact.
“I thought it would fall in our garden,” a resident and witness who gave only her name told reporters near the crash site when Ana Lucia told reporters. “It was scary, but thank God there were no victims among the locals. It seems that the 62 people on the plane were the real victims.”
Bystander video verified by The Associated Press shows at least two bodies scattered among burning wreckage.
Brazilian television network GloboNews showed aerial footage of an area of smoke billowing from a destroyed fuselage. Earlier additional footage on GloboNews showed the plane drifting downward in a flat spin.
According to Flightradar24, data from the plane indicated it was diving at a speed of 8,000 to 24,000 feet per minute in the last 60 seconds of the flight.
The Brazilian Air Force’s Center for Air Accident Investigation and Prevention said in a statement that pilots did not respond to calls from Sao Paulo air traffic control, did not call for help, and did not say they were operating in bad weather conditions.
In a separate statement, Brazil’s federal police said the investigation had already begun and that specialists in aircraft accident investigation and victim identification were being deployed to provide assistance.
VOEPASS employees at Guarulhos airport told AP that the company is notifying victims’ relatives and assisting them in a private area at the airport.
The manufacturer of that plane, French-Italian ATR, said in a statement that it had been informed that the accident involved the ATR 72-500, and said the company’s specialists “are fully involved to support both the investigation and the customer.”
The ATR 72 is generally used for shorter flights. The planes are built by a joint venture between Airbus of France and Italy’s Leonardo SpA. Crashes involving various models of the ATR 72 have resulted in 470 fatalities since the 1990s, according to a database maintained by the Aviation Safety Network.
The Yeti Airlines crash that killed 72 people in Nepal in January 2023 involved an ATR 72-500. The cause was human error, an unintended positioning of both propellers in the feathered position.
The Capela neighborhood where the plane crashed on Friday is far from the center of the prosperous city of 77,000. The plane had taken off from Cascavel, in the state of Parana.
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AP video journalist Tatiana Pollastri contributed from Vinhedo. AP writer David Koenig contributed from Dallas.
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