VINHEDO, Brazil (AP) — A passenger plane crashed into a gated residential community in Brazil’s Sao Paulo state Friday, killing all 61 people on board and leaving behind a smoky wreckage, officials and the airline said.
Officials did not immediately report any casualties at the scene of the crash in the town of Vinhedo, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Sao Paulo, but witnesses at the scene said there were no casualties among nearby residents.
The airline, VOEPASS, said the ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop, with 57 passengers and 4 crew on board, crashed in Vinhedo while en route to Sao Paulo’s international airport, Guarulhos. It provided a flight report containing the names of the passengers, but not their nationalities. Earlier reports 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 prioritizes providing unrestricted assistance to the families of the victims and effectively cooperating with the authorities to determine the causes of the accident.”
It is the worst air crash since January 2023, when 72 people died when an Eti Airways flight stalled on landing in Nepal. That flight was also an ATR 72, and the final report blamed pilot error.
At an event in southern Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva asked the crowd to stand and observe a minute of silence as he shared the news.
The state’s fire brigade, military police and Civil Defense Commission teams were dispatched to the spot. Speaking to reporters, Sao Paulo’s Secretary of Public Security Guilherme Territ confirmed that no survivors had been found. The black box of the plane was also intact, he said.
“I thought it was going to fall in our yard,” a resident and witness, who gave her name as Ana Lucia, told reporters near the crash site. “It was scary, but thank God there were no victims among the locals.”
Video obtained and verified by The Associated Press from a witness showed at least two bodies strewn with pieces of burning wreckage.
Brazilian television network GloboNews showed aerial footage of the area where smoke was billowing from the fuselage of the destroyed plane. Additional footage earlier on GloboNews showed the plane moving downward in a flat spin.
Flight-tracking website Flightradar24 reported that data transmitted from the plane indicated the plane was diving between 8,000 and 24,000 feet per minute in the last 60 seconds of the flight.
The Brazilian Air Force’s Center for the Investigation and Prevention of Air Accidents said in a statement that the pilots did not respond to calls from air traffic control in Sao Paulo, call for help or say they were operating under adverse weather conditions.
In a separate statement, Brazil’s federal police said it had already begun its investigation and had dispatched experts to identify plane crash and disaster victims.
VOEPASS staff at Guarulhos airport told the AP that the agency has notified family members of victims and is supporting them in a separate room at the airport.
Franco-Italian aircraft manufacturer ATR said in a statement that the crash involved its ATR 72-500 model, and that company experts were “fully engaged in both the investigation and supporting the customer”.
ATR 72 is generally used on short flights. According to the Aviation Safety Network’s database, the planes were developed by a joint venture between France’s Airbus and 470 people died in the Leonardo Spa, Italy crashes involving various models of the ATR72.
The Capela neighborhood where Friday’s plane crashed sits in a district far from the center of the prosperous city of 77,000 residents. It originates from Kaskeval in Parana state.
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AP video journalist Tatiana Pollastri contributed from Vinhedo. AP writer David Koenig contributed from Dallas.
