CNN
—
A passenger plane carrying 61 people crashed outside Sao Paulo on Friday afternoon, killing everyone on board, according to a statement from airline Voipas.
Dramatic footage circulating on social media showed the plane falling and its destroyed fuselage engulfed in flames on the ground.
“The company regrets to announce that all 61 people on board flight 2283 died at the scene,” Voipas said in a statement, reducing the death toll from an initial 62. There were 57 passengers and four crew on board, according to the company.
All of the passengers were carrying Brazilian documents, airline officials said, though it was not yet clear if any had dual citizenship.
Flight tracking data shows the ATR 72-500, a twin-turboprop aircraft, dropped 17,000 feet in just one minute, but it is not yet clear why.
Videos posted on social media of the incident showed the plane soaring in the sky before hitting the ground as people in the neighborhood screamed in fear. Another video showed the plane’s wreckage burning on the ground. City officials told CNN that no one on the ground was injured.
The plane had departed Cascavel, in the Brazilian state of Paraná, and was en route to Guarulhos, in the state of Sao Paulo, when it lost signal shortly before 1:30 p.m. local time (12:30 p.m. EST), according to Flightradar24 data.
The plane began losing altitude a minute and a half before the crash. The plane was flying at 17,000 feet until 1:21 p.m. local time, when it dropped about 250 feet in 10 seconds. It then climbed about 400 feet in about eight seconds.
Eight seconds later, the plane lost nearly 2,000 feet. Then, within about a minute, it began a rapid descent—losing nearly 17,000 feet in just one minute.
The last data transmission from the aircraft was at 1:22 p.m. local time.
Voipas CEO Eduardo Bosch said at a press conference that there is no information yet about the cause of the accident.
“The entire crew was efficient,” Bush said.
“We are waiting to access all communications between the pilot and the control tower to gain a fuller understanding of what happened.”
Bush said the plane had two black boxes – devices that store flight data, designed to withstand accidents – and that highly qualified labs were available to analyze them.
“On the one hand, it is possible to recover the data from the recorder, but on the other hand, there is a possibility that due to the severity of the accident, the recorders were damaged, making it impossible to access the recorded data,” Bush said.
Sao Paulo Security Minister Guilherme Deret told a news conference that a medical team was on the scene and working to identify the victims, many of whom were so badly burned that they were difficult to visually identify.
Officials said the fires sparked by the accident were under control. “The bodies of the victims are being transferred to the Legal Medical Institute of Campinas for legal action,” the Vinhedo city council said in a statement.
To help identify the bodies, families were asked to share the victims’ medical documents “such as radiological, medical and/or dental examinations,” according to a statement from the São Paulo state government.
Interrupting a speech he gave at an afternoon maritime event to discuss the incident, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called for a minute of silence for the victims of the plane’s passengers and crew.
“I would like everyone to stand up so we can have a minute of silence because a plane just crashed in Vinhedo City… and it looks like they are all dead,” he said in a video of his statement shared on X.
The president later declared three days of mourning for the victims.
Voipas officials said the company spent the afternoon securing hotels and psychologists for the victims’ families and providing them with support.
One resident recorded video of the aftermath of a plane crashing into her neighbor’s house outside Sao Paulo, telling CNN’s Julia Vargas Jones she was eating lunch in her kitchen when she saw the plane go down.
A passenger plane carrying 62 people crashed in Brazil on August 9, 2024.
She said she crouched in terror and began praying, describing what happened as a “moment of panic” for the entire city. She added that private roads leading to the properties are now closed to everyone, including residents, and that rescue workers are in the area.
The Vinhedo city hall said in a statement on Friday that it was waiting for a Brazilian Air Force team to begin investigating the cause of the accident.
The crew did not report any emergency before the crash, Brigadier General Marcelo Moreno, who heads Brazil’s aviation accident agency, told a news conference. “At first, we had this information that there was no information about the plane, that the plane was in any kind of emergency,” he told a news conference.
Voipas CEO Bush said the airline would work closely with CENIPA to investigate the incident.
According to registration data from the Brazilian Aviation Registry, the Voepass aircraft was manufactured in 2010 and purchased by the airline in September 2022.
According to the aircraft’s registration data, it has been “prohibited from operating as an air taxi.” But it is not clear why or when this decision was made at this time.
CNN has reached out to the Brazilian aviation authority for more details on the decision.
ATR, the aircraft’s manufacturer, says it was aware of the incident and is working to support investigators.
“What we can say at this moment is that ATR has been informed of an incident in Vinhedo, Brazil involving an ATR 72-500 aircraft. Our first thoughts are with all individuals affected by this event. ATR professionals are fully committed to supporting the investigation and the customer,” the statement read.
The ATR 72, built by a European consortium, has a checkered history, aviation experts told CNN, with at least 15 accidents. resulting in the death of passengers Includes ATR turbocharged engines registered worldwide.
Some people missed the tragic flight on Friday. A man who missed the flight told Brazil’s Globo news agency that at least 10 people were waiting at the wrong gate and missed the flight before it took off.
“They told me, ‘Sir, you are not going to get on this plane because we have already exceeded the maximum boarding limit.’ I even pushed them a little bit – ‘Sir, put me on this plane, I have to leave’ – and then he said, ‘There is no way, what I can do is rebook your ticket,’” the man told Globo.
When the passengers realized they were at the wrong gate, they begged airport staff to let them board the plane, but were told they couldn’t. “My legs are shaking; God only knows how I feel. Thank God we didn’t get on that plane,” the man said after discovering the plane had crashed.
CNN’s Isa Soares, Tatiana Arias, Pam Boykoff, Marcelo Medoros and Lex Harvey contributed to this report.