All 62 people aboard the Voepass airline aircraft that crashed earlier today in the city of Vinhedo, Brazil, have been confirmed dead, as the mayor announced that there are no survivors.
The twin-engine ATR-72 was on a flight from Cascavel in the state of Paraná to Guarulhos Airport in São Paulo. According to a statement from Voepass, the aircraft had 58 passengers and 4 crew members on board, but the cause of the crash remains unknown. “There is still no information on how it happened,” the airline said in a statement.
Video of the Plane’s Fall:
The Flightradar24 website reported that the doomed aircraft was PS-VPB, a 14-year-old ATR72-500 built in 2010. The last signal received from the plane was about an hour and a half after takeoff. During the final 60 seconds of the flight, its transponder broadcasted the aircraft’s vertical descent, losing altitude at a rate of 8,000 to 24,000 feet per minute.
It is noted that the plane crashed into the backyard of a house, but no residents were injured by the impact. Only one house was damaged in the residential area where the crash occurred, according to city officials from nearby Valinhos.
Additionally, during a speech at an event, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva asked attendees to observe a minute of silence in memory of the victims of the air tragedy.
Videos broadcast by television networks capture the uncontrollable spiral of the doomed aircraft and its crash into the ground. In the footage from the crash site, thick smoke can be seen rising into the sky from the spot where the aircraft went down. As shown in the videos, the plane began to spin around and fell like a deck of cards.
Watch the video:
