A passenger plane crashed in a fiery wreck in a residential part of Brazil’s Sao Paulo state Friday afternoon, killing all 62 people on board – moments after harrowing video captured the aircraft spiraling out of control.
The airline operating the flight, Voepass, said its twin-engine turboprop plane was en route to Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos International Airport with 58 passengers and four crew members on board when it went down in the city of Vinhedo.
There were no survivors, local authorities said, according to the BBC.
No one on the ground was injured after the plane dropped an incredible 17,000 feet in about a minute, CNN reported, citing flight tracking data.
The Brazilian television network GloboNews aired footage of the plane listing and drifting downwards for a few seconds before spiraling and crashing behind a group of trees, just out of view of the camera.
The network also showed footage of fire and smoke coming from what looked like a mangled plane fuselage in an area of residential homes.
Other video of the fiery aftermath shows two bodies strewn among flaming wreckage.
“I thought it was going to fall in our yard,” a resident and witness who said her name was Ana Lucia told reporters near the crash site.
“It was scary, but thank God there were no victims among the locals. It seems that the 62 people inside the plane were the real victims, though.”
One resident who videotaped some of the crash’s aftermath told CNN as she saw the plane fall through the sky, she ducked down in horror and prayed.
She called it a “moment of panic” for the entire city.
The ATR72-500 was built in 2010 in Europe, according to Flightradar24.
The doomed aircraft took off from Cascavel at 11:56 local time, and its last signal was transmitted about an hour and half later.
When he heard about the crash, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva asked the crowd at an event in southern Brazil to observe a moment of silence.
“I would like everyone to stand up so that we can observe a minute of silence because a plane has just crashed in the city of Vinhedo, in São Paulo, with 58 passengers and four crew members and it appears they all died,” he said in a video that was posted on X.
No cause for the crash has been released.
“We don’t know if there was any kind of mid-air collision, whether there was an engine failure. We just don’t have enough facts,” CNN aviation analyst Peter Goetz told the outlet.
Plane manufacturer of the ATR72-500, French-Italian ATR, said in a statement it was informed of an accident involving that model of plane and officials are “fully engaged to support both the investigation and the customer.”
“Our first thoughts are with all the individuals affected by this event,” it said.
With Post wires
