'Hits all of us': Remains of all 62 Brazil plane crash victims retrieved from wreckage (2024)

Brazilian rescue teams retrieved the remains of all 62 passengers from the wreckage of a plane crash in São Paulo state on Saturday, as families started gathering in the metropolis to identify and bury their loved ones.

Local airline Voepass' plane — an ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop — was headed for São Paulo's international airport in Guarulhos on Friday with 58 passengers and four crew members when it went down in the city of Vinhedo.

Rain drizzled down on rescue workers as they recovered the first bodies from the scene in the chill of the Southern Hemisphere's winter.

Brazilian authorities began transferring the corpses to the morgue on Friday and called on victims' family members to bring any medical, X-ray and dental exams to help identify the bodies. Blood tests also helped identification efforts.

Local fire department spokesman Maycon Cristo told journalists in Vinhedo that a winch was used to remove parts of the plane from the ground.

The São Paulo state government said in a statement that rescue operations finished at 6:30pm local time, with forensics experts identifying the bodies of the pilot and co-pilot.

There were 34 male and 28 female bodies in the wreckage, the government said.

Crash 'hits all of us' pilots

Images recorded by witnesses showed the aircraft in a flat spin, plunging vertically before smashing to the ground inside a gated community.

It left an obliterated fuselage consumed by fire.

Residents said there were no injuries on the ground.

Initially, the company said its plane had 62 passengers, then it revised the number to 61.

It raised the figure once again early on Saturday, after it found a passenger named Constantino Thé Maia was not on its original list.

Voepass said three passengers who held Brazilian identification also carried Venezuelan documents. One had Portuguese.

A video shared on social media channels on Saturday shows a Voepass pilot telling passengers of a flight from Guarulhos to the city of Cascavel, the same origin of the crashed plane, that the ATR 72 has flown safely around the world for decades.

Loading...

He also asked passengers to be respectful to the memory of his colleagues and the company, and asked for prayers.

"It was a fatality. The pilot was my personal friend. I have known all the crew from long ago," the unidentified pilot said.

"We are professionals, we have our families. This tragedy doesn't hit only those who perished in this accident. It hits all of us.

"We are giving all our hearts, all our best to be here and fulfil our mission to take you safely and comfortably to your destination."

Ice named as potential cause

Metsul, a meteorological company in Brazil, said on Friday there were reports of severe icing in São Paulo state around the time of the crash.

Local media cited experts pointing to icing as a potential cause for the accident.

The US Federal Aviation Administration has issued operating procedures for ATRs and similar planes, telling pilots not to use the autopilot in icing conditions.

But Brazilian aviation expert Lito Sousa cautioned that meteorological conditions alone might not be enough to explain why the plane fell in the manner that it did on Friday.

"Analysing an air crash just with images can lead to wrong conclusions about the causes," Mr Sousa told AP by phone.

"But we can see a plane with loss of support, no horizontal speed. In this flat spin condition, there's no way to reclaim control of the plane."

Brazil's air force said on Saturday that both black boxes of the plane had been sent to its analysis laboratory in the capital Brasilia.

The results of its investigations are expected to be published within 30 days, it said.

Voepass director of operations Marcelo Moura told reporters on Friday night that, while there were forecasts for ice, they were within acceptable levels for the aircraft.

Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Henrique Baldi of the Brazilian Air Force's centre for the investigation and prevention of air accidents told reporters in a press conference that it was still too early to confirm whether ice caused the crash.

The plane is "certified in several countries to fly in severe icing conditions, including in countries unlike ours, where the impact of ice is more significant", Mr Baldi said.

In an earlier statement, the centre said the plane's pilots did not call for help or say they were operating under adverse weather conditions.

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 build-up while the plane was circling in a holding pattern.

That plane rolled at about 2,438 metres and dove into the ground, killing all 68 people on board.

Criminal probe expected

There has been no evidence either that the pilots tried to contact controllers of regional airports, Ports and Airports Minister Silvio Costa Filho told reporters on Friday night in Vinhedo.

Brazil's Federal Police said it began its own investigation and dispatched specialists in plane crashes and the identification of disaster victims.

French-Italian plane manufacturer ATR said in a statement it had been informed that the accident involved its ATR 72-500 model, and that company specialists are "fully engaged to support 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.

Crashes involving various models of the ATR 72 have resulted in 470 deaths going back to the 1990s, according to a database of the Aviation Safety Network.

Costa Filho, the airports minister, said the air force's centre will also conduct a criminal probe of the accident.

"We will investigate so this case is fully explained to the Brazilian people," he said.

It was the world's deadliest airline crash since January 2023, when 72 people died on board a Yeti Airlines plane in Nepal that stalled and crashed while making its landing approach.

That plane also was an ATR 72, and the final report blamed pilot error.

AP