A passenger plane with 61 people on board crashed on Friday, August 9 in the Brazilian state of São Paolo, killing all the passengers and the crew. The plane operated by the airline Voepass had 57 people on board and four members of the crew, The Guardian reported. Initial information indicated that there were 62 people onboard, but the airline revised the number down to 61, including the crew members. Video showed the plane descending in a spiral before crashing in a residential area in the city of Vinhedo. “There are no survivors,” said Col Emerson Massera of the Brazilian military police told reporters at the crash site on Friday. Massera said the fire had been brought under control, but about 50 firefighters were still working to cool down the area. “It’s a very sad scene; our work now is focused on clearing the area so that the investigation and identification of the bodies can proceed,” he said. Speaking at an event in southern Brazil on Friday afternoon, minutes after the accident, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva sent his condolences to the families of the victims. “I would like to ask for a minute of silence for the victims,” he said. The ATR-72 turboprop plane was en route from Cascavel, in the state of Paraná, to Guarulhos, in São Paulo, when it crashed in a residential neighbourhood about 76km away from the state capital. No casualties were reported on the ground, according to Col Cassio Araújo de Freitas, the general commander of the military police. “We have no reports of any other victims besides those on the aircraft,” he said. “At this time, Voepass is prioritizing provision of unrestricted assistance to the victims’ families and effectively collaborating with authorities to determine the causes of the accident,” the airline said in a statement. According to the Flight Radar website, the plane was traveling at 17,000ft before plunging 4,000ft in two minutes, and then its signal was lost, The Guardian reported. The Brazilian air force and the federal police sent teams of investigators to the site. The head of the air force’s Aeronautical Accident Investigation and Prevention Centre, Brigadier Marcelo Moreno, said that there was no timeline for the investigation to be completed. “It is still very premature to say anything,” he said. But he said it was already clear that “there was no communication from the aircraft to the control authorities indicating an emergency”. Voepass stated that the aircraft had taken off “without any flight restrictions, with all its systems functioning properly for the operation.”
