VINHEDO, Brazil — Brazilian authorities worked Saturday to determine what exactly caused the plane crash in Sao Paulo state the day before. killed all 62 people on board.
The plane of the local airline Voepass, a twin-engine turboprop ATR 72, was heading to Sao Paulo Guarulhos international airport with 58 passengers and 4 crew members, when it crashed in the city of Vinhedo.
The company initially said its plane had 62 passengers, then revised the number to 61 and early Saturday raised the figure once again after discovering that a passenger named Constantino Thé Maia was not on its original list.
Images recorded by witnesses It showed the plane in a flat spin and falling vertically before crashing to the ground inside a gated community and leaving a fuselage destroyed and consumed by fire. Residents said there were no injuries on the ground.
Rain fell on rescuers as they recovered the first bodies from the site in the cold of the southern hemisphere winter. Some residents of the condominium quietly went out to spend the night elsewhere.
It was the world’s deadliest plane crash since January 2023, when 72 people died aboard a Yeti Airlines plane in Nepal that stalled and crashed while making its landing approach. That plane was also an ATR 72, and the final report attributed the error to the pilot.
A report on Friday from Brazilian television network Globo’s meteorological center said it “confirmed the possibility of ice formation in the Vinhedo region,” and local media cited experts pointing to ice as a possible cause of the accident.
An American Eagle ATR 72-200 crashed on October 31, 1994, and the United States National Transportation Safety Board determined that the probable cause was ice accumulation while the aircraft was circling in a holding pattern. The plane taxied at about 8,000 feet and plunged into the ground, killing all 68 people on board. The US Federal Aviation Administration issued operating procedures for ATR and similar aircraft, instructing pilots not to use autopilot in icing conditions.
But Brazilian aviation expert Lito Sousa warned that weather conditions alone may not be enough to explain why the plane went down the way it did on Friday.
“Analyzing a plane crash with images alone can lead to erroneous conclusions about the causes,” Sousa told the AP by phone. “But we can see a plane with a loss of support, without horizontal speed. “In this flat spin condition, there is no way to regain control of the airplane.”
Speaking to reporters on Friday in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo Public Security Secretary Guilherme Derrite said the plane’s black box had been recovered, apparently in a state of preservation.
Marcelo Moura, Voepass’ chief operating officer, told reporters Friday night that while there were forecasts for ice, it was within acceptable levels for the aircraft.
Likewise, Lt. Col. Carlos Henrique Baldi of the Brazilian air force’s air accident prevention and research center told reporters at a late afternoon news conference that it was still too early to confirm whether the ice caused the accident.
The plane is “certified in several countries to fly in severe icing conditions, including in countries other than our own, where the impact of icing is more significant,” said Baldi, who heads the center’s research division.
In an earlier statement, the center said the plane’s pilots did not call for help or say they were operating in adverse weather conditions. There has also been no evidence that the pilots attempted to contact controllers at regional airports, Ports and Airports Minister Silvio Costa Filho told reporters Friday night in Vinhedo.
Brazil’s Federal Police launched its own investigation and sent specialists in air accidents and disaster victim identification, it said in a statement.
The Sao Paulo state government said Saturday morning that 21 bodies had been recovered from the scene and two had already been identified. Maycon Cristo, spokesman for the local fire department, told reporters that a winch is being used to remove parts of the plane’s carcass from the ground.
“When we see a possible body in the middle of the destruction of the plane, the rescue teams enter. Then they take photographs, gather all possible evidence of the victim so that the identification is as precise as possible,” Cristo said.
Franco-Italian aircraft manufacturer ATR said in a statement that it had been informed that the accident involved its ATR 72-500 model and that the company’s specialists are “fully committed to supporting both the investigation and the customer.”
The ATR 72 is generally used on shorter flights. The planes are built by a joint venture of Airbus in France and Italy’s Leonardo SpA.
Accidents involving various models of the ATR 72 have caused 470 deaths since the 1990s, according to a Aviation Safety Network database.
Brazilian authorities began moving the bodies to the morgue on Friday and asked the victims’ relatives to bring medical, radiological and dental examinations to help identify the bodies. Blood tests were also performed to assist in identification efforts.
Costa Filho, airports minister, said the air force center will also conduct a criminal investigation into the crash.
“We are going to investigate so that this case is fully explained to the Brazilian people,” he stated.
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Sá Pessoa reported from Sao Paulo and Koenig from Dallas.
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
