Brazil

Recovery work after plane crash with 61 dead

An aerial view of the remains of the plane after the horrific crash

(Bild: APA/AFP/MIGUEL SCHINCARIOL)

One day after the devastating crash of a passenger plane in a residential area of the Brazilian metropolis of São Paulo, the bodies are being recovered and identified.

"We assume that all the bodies will be removed by the end of the day," said Carlos Palhares, Director of the National Institute of Criminalistics. According to the civil defense, 31 people have been rescued so far. 62 people died in the accident.

The airline VoePass had initially stated this figure, but hours later corrected it to 61 and then increased it again to 62 on Saturday morning (local time). According to the news portal "G1", one passenger's name was initially not found on the list of passengers on board due to a technical problem. According to the report, the victims included a father and his three-year-old daughter, who were planning to spend Father's Day - which is celebrated in Brazil on Sunday - together, medical assistants, businessmen and professors.

The plane crashed in the middle of a residential area.

(Bild: APA/AFP/Nelson ALMEIDA)

Cause of the crash still unclear
Both the flight data recorder and the voice recorder - the so-called black box - were found by the Brazilian Air Force (FAB), said Marcelo Moreno, head of the Center for the Investigation and Prevention of Aviation Accidents (Cenipa). Whether the devices could shed light on the cause of the crash would depend on the degree of damage to them, he said.

(Bild: APA/Felipe Magalhaes Filho)

The ATR 72 turboprop passenger plane crashed on Friday on its flight from Cascavel in the state of Paraná to São Paulo shortly before reaching its destination in a residential area of the small town of Vinhedo. Data from the Flightradar 24 platform suggests that the plane descended by almost 4,000 meters in less than a minute. There was no kind of emergency declaration before the crash, Moreno said.

The cause of the accident is still being investigated. Experts are also considering the formation of ice on the wings - turning an airplane into "a stone without lift", wrote the Brazilian news portal "UOL". According to this, there was a warning of ice formation at the site of the crash. Other experts did not rule out the possibility that there was more than one cause of the crash.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ordered three days of national mourning. The governor of São Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas, promised all necessary support.

One of the deadliest accidents in Brazilian aviation
According to media reports, the accident is one of the deadliest in the history of Brazilian aviation. Many people remember a crash on November 28, 2016, when the plane of Brazilian soccer club Chapecoense crashed on its way to Medellín for the first leg of the Copa Sudamericana final in Colombia. At the time, 71 people died, including almost all the players, coaches, trainers and journalists traveling with them. Six passengers survived.