Brazil plane crash latest: All 61 on board dead after crash near Sao Paulo

Data from the aircraft-tracking service Flightradar24 provides further information on VoePass flight 2283 before it crashed with the loss of 61 lives.

The aircraft appears to have left the stand at Cascavel airport 16 minutes late, at 11:56am. After a very short taxi it took off two minutes later, reaching its cruising altitude of 17,000 feet at 12:22 pm. It maintained this height for almost an hour.

Flightradar24 relies on crowdsourcing from volunteers who receive data transmitted by aircraft and feed it on to the company’s base in Stockholm. The data may not represent the true picture; during the cruise, Flightradar24 shows the ground speed varying from 94 to 357 knots, an implausible range.

The rapid descent begins at 1:21 pm, reaching a maximum vertical speed of 24,000 feet per minute – about 10 times the normal rate of descent, and corresponding to 275mph. The last data transmission is at 1:22 pm, when the aircraft is show as being at 4,100 feet with a vertical speed of over 12,000 feet per minute, around 140mph.

The data may help investigators from Brazil’s National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC) determine the causes of the tragedy.

The aircraft involved in the fatal crash in Brazil was a 14-year-old ATR-27, registered as PS-VPB.

The ATR 72, built by a Franco-Italian joint venture, has been in service since 1989. It seats up to 78 passenger and is described by its maker as “the most fuel efficient regional aircraft”.

The plane type is popular for domestic operations in India, Brazil, New Zealand, Thailand, Russia and Spain’s Canary Islands.

In the UK, passengers are most likely to fly on an ATR-72 on Aer Lingus Regional services operated by Emerald Airlines, and on domestic flights on Loganair. Like most other aircraft types that have been in operation for decades, the ATR 72 has been involved in a number of tragedies in its 35-year history. The event on 9 August 2024 was the 12th.

The first, in 1994, was a domestic flight with American Eagle from Indianapolis to Chicago. The wings iced up while the aircraft was in a holding pattern. All 68 passengers and crew died.

The next accident was over a decade later, off the coast of Palermo, in 2005 involving a Tuninter aircraft flying from Bari in Italy to Djerba in Tunisia. Engineers had mistakenly fitted a fuel gauge intended for the smaller ATR-42. The plane ran out of fuel and ditched at high speed in the Mediterranean with the loss of 16 lives; 23 people survived.

Subsequent crashes were on domestic flights in Thailand, Cuba, Russia, Laos and Taiwan – where two ATR-72s belonging to TransAsia Airways crashed within eight months, in July 2014 and February 2015.

The final two fatal crashes before the Brazilian tragedy were both domestic flights in nations with poor aviation safety records: Iran in 2018, in which 65 people died, and Nepal in 2023, killing 72 people.

A nearby resident told CNN she witnessed Voepass flight 2283 crash into her neighborhood as she was eating lunch.

She called the crash a “moment of panic” for the city of Vinhedo. She told the outlet she ducked down and began praying as the plane hit near her home.

The plane, carrying 68 people, hit multiple houses as it crahsed, Brazil’s Civil Defense told CNN.

A plane with 61 people aboard has crashed in a fiery wreck in a residential area of a city in Brazil’s Sao Paulo state, an airline said, and the country’s president said that all passengers were presumed dead.

The airline VoePass confirmed that a plane heading to Sao Paulo’s international airport Guarulhos crashed with 58 passengers and four crew members aboard.

Brazilian television network GloboNews showed footage of a large area on fire and smoke coming out of what appeared to be a plane’s fuselage in an area full of houses.

Read more from The Independent:

The airline VoePass and the plane manufacturer ATR have both issued statements regarding today’s crash.

“There is still no confirmation of how the accident occurred or the current situation of the people on board,” a statement from VoePass reads.

Meanwhile, ATR said it is working to support an investigation into the crash.

“What we can say at this point in time is that ATR has been informed that an accident occurred in Vinhedo, Brazil involving an ATR 72-500,” their statement reads. “Our first thoughts are with all the individuals affected by this event. The ATR specialists are fully engaged to support both the investigation and the customer.”