Videos shared on social media show the ATR-72 aircraft spinning out of control as it plunged down behind a cluster of trees near houses, followed by a large plume of black smoke.
Videos shared on social media show the ATR-72 aircraft spinning out of control as it plunged down behind a cluster of trees near houses, followed by a large plume of black smoke.
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
A regional turboprop plane has crashed near Sao Paulo in Brazil, killing all 61 people on board.
Regional carrier Voepass said the plane, bound for Sao Paulo’s international airport, took off from Cascavel, in the state of Parana, and crashed at 1.30pm on Friday, Saturday morning NZ time, in the town of Vinhedo, 80km northwest of Sao Paulo.
Video shared on social media showed the ATR-72 aircraft spinning out of control as it plunged behind a cluster of trees near houses, followed by a large plume of black smoke.
A Voepass corrigiu o número de mortos no avião que caiu na cidade de Vinhedo, no interior de São Paulo, para 61. A nota da empresa informou que 57 passageiros e 4 tripulantes estavam a bordo da aeronave. O acidente não deixou sobreviventes #CNNBrasil360pic.twitter.com/x4dJcKWbSe
Nearby resident Daniel de Lima said he heard a loud noise before looking outside his condominium in Vinhedo, when he saw the plane in a horizontal spiral.
“It was rotating, but it wasn’t moving forward,” he told Reuters. “Soon after it fell out of the sky and exploded.”
City officials at Valinhos, near Vinhedo, said there were no survivors and only one home in the local condominium complex had been damaged, with none of the residents being hurt.
“I almost believe the pilot tried to avoid a nearby neighbourhood, which is densely populated,” de Lima said.
O governador de São Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas, que estava em reunião com governadores no Espírito Santo, está a caminho de Vinhedo (SP), onde um avião com 62 pessoas a bordo caiu. Em conversa com @AndreiaSadi, Tarcísio informou que irá montar um gabinete de crise conjunto com o… pic.twitter.com/Qe9eEr4O1M
Authorities did not immediately say what had caused the crash, though Sao Paulo state official Guilherme Derrite said the plane’s “black box” had been recovered and it seemed to be intact.
The video of the crash showed clear weather, with the forecast for the area being for light rainfall and winds of 10km/h.
Em nota interna, a Voepass Linhas Aéreas, companhia aérea dona da aeronave que caiu com 62 pessoas – 58 passageiros e quatro tripulantes – em Vinhedo, interior de São Paulo, pede que não se compartilhe informações com pessoas não envolvidas na operação; que está tomando todas as… pic.twitter.com/VWmOG41Qqo
John Hansman, a professor in the department of aeronautics and astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reviewed some of the footage shared on social media and without having reviewed flight data, said the crash did not appear to have been caused by weather.
“It may have been an engine failure on one side that was mismanaged by the crew,” he said.
“It could be the thrust of the remaining engine that started the rotation downward.”
A VoePass ATR 72-500 crashed today en route from Cascavel to São Paulo. What the ADS-B data tells us so far, including downloadable granular data: https://t.co/7UJbIAYq2mpic.twitter.com/I59jLuxDR0
US aviation safety consultant and former commercial pilot John Cox said he would want to validate the Flightradar data, which showed a lot of gyrations in speed, but regardless, something “really significant” happened to cause the plane to spin when it came down.
“We don’t spin airliners,” Cox said.
“So that says at some point it stalled and then the flight crew lost control of it. But it appears that there may have been some catastrophic event before that loss of control.”
Voepass, Brazil’s fourth-largest airline by market share, said it could not provide any additional information on what caused the plane to crash. It had originally reported 62 people were aboard the aircraft.
A regional turboprop plane crashed near Sao Paulo in Brazil on Saturday morning NZ time. Photo / Flightradar24
Franco-Italian ATR, jointly owned by Airbus and Leonardo, is the dominant producer of regional turboprop planes seating 40 to 70 people.
ATR told Reuters its specialists were “fully engaged” with the investigation into the crash and with its customers.
The crash is Brazil’s deadliest since 199 people were killed in 2007 on a flight operated by TAM, which later joined LAN to become what is now Latam Airlines.
In the area where #2Z2283 crashed there is an active warning for severe icing between 12 000 feet and 21 000 feet. #2Z2283 was flying at 17 000 feet just before the crash. pic.twitter.com/KpLRIHi4td
