|
|
|
|
|
8 August 2024
|
Aircraft with 62 aboard crashes in Brazil; no survivors
|
|
|
|
|
An ATR 72-500 turboprop aircraft, Voepass Linhas Aéreas Flight 2283, flying a scheduled domestic Brazilian passenger flight from Cascavel in southern Parana state to Sao Paulo's Guarulhos international airport with 58 passengers and four crew members on board, crashed in Vinhedo, São Paulo State, on Friday, 9 August 2024. The aircraft was flying at an altitude of 17 000ft (5 200m) prior to stalling and entering a flat spin with a rapid descent at around 13h22 BRT. All 62 people on board were killed. The crash was the deadliest aviation accident in Brazil since TAM Airlines Flight 3054 in July 2007.
Aircraft
The aircraft involved, registered as PS-VPB, was a 14-year-old twin-engine turboprop ATR 72-500 with serial number 908, powered by two Pratt & Whitney Canada PW127M engines. It was acquired by Voepass in September 2022 from Indonesian carrier Pelita Air Service.
Crew and passengers
The pilot in command of the flight was Captain Danilo Santos Romano, age 35 and the co-pilot was First Officer Humberto de Campos Alencar e Silva, age 61. The flight attendants were Débora Soper Ávila, age 28 and Rubia Silva de Lima, age 41. All the passengers and crew were Brazilian. Three of the passengers had dual citizenship with Venezuela and one with Portugual.
The victims included eight doctors, including six oncologists who were traveling to a cancer conference in São Paulo, four professors from Western Paraná State University, two staff members of the Federal University of Technology – Paraná and one child. At least 10 ticketed passengers failed to board the flight because they were waiting at the wrong gate.
The aircraft was traveling from Cascavel, in Paraná, to the city of Guarulhos, in São Paulo State. In the area of the crash, there was an active SIGMET advisory for severe icing from 12 000 to 21 000 feet (3 700 to 6 400m). Meteorological reports at the time of the accident indicated that areas of turbulence, thunderstorms and icing were present in areas surrounding the accident. The Brazilian Air Force said in a statement that the flight did not declare an emergency.
According to Flightradar24, the aircraft was cruising at 17 000 feet (5 200m) when, at 13h21 local time, the aircraft experienced a brief loss of altitude and then briefly gained altitude. Shortly thereafter, the aircraft entered what appeared to be a flat spin and a steep and terminal descent. The last data transmission and loss of radar contact occurred at 13h22, before the crash. ADS-B data indicated that the aircraft had reached a maximum vertical descent rate of 24 000 feet per minute (120m/s).
Firefighters reported that the plane crashed in Vinhedo in the state of São Paulo, 76 kilometres (47mi) northwest of the city of São Paulo. The plane crashed near a condominium in the Capela neighbourhood. Despite earlier reports of several houses being hit by the plane, it crashed in the front yard of a house in a gated community and nobody on the ground was killed or injured. Videos of the aircraft before it crashed showed it in a downward flat spin, in a slight nose-down orientation and were widely shared on social media. Brazilian television news channel GloboNews interrupted Olympics coverage to broadcast from the area around the crash, showing fire and smoke rising from the plane fuselage.
All 62 people on board the aircraft, 58 passengers and four crew, were killed, along with a dog brought on board by the Venezuelan passengers. Most of the bodies found in the crash site were charred, making the identification of the victims difficult. An eyewitness reported seeing three bodies ejected from the plane and falling into a backyard; this was later refuted by firefighters, who stated that no bodies had been ejected and all were found in their seats.
CENIPA's head, Marcelo Moreno, said on the day of the crash that both flight recorders, the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and the flight data recorder (FDR), had been recovered and were in CENIPA's possession.
The bodies of the victims, 34 males and 28 females, were taken to the Central Medicolegal Institute in São Paulo for processing. The bodies of the pilot and co-pilot were identified earlier in the day, said Dario Pacheco, mayor of Vinhedo.
By 11 August, local emergency services reported that all bodies had been removed from the crash site and the wreckage had been handed over to CENIPA for further investigation. On the same day, CENIPA announced that flight recorder data had been downloaded and was being analysed.
Four people with dual citizenship were among the victims, three Venezuelans and one Portuguese woman, said regional carrier Voepass, which operated the aircraft. The Venezuelans were a four-year-old boy, his mother and grandmother, local outlet Globo News reported. The boy's dog was also on the flight, which the family was taking to later head to Colombia, according to the outlet.
Authorities used seat assignments, physical characteristics, documents and belongings such as cell phones to identify the victims, firefighter Maycon Cristo said at the crash site earlier on Saturday as the bodies were being pulled from the wreckage.
Relatives of the victims were brought to Sao Paulo to provide DNA samples to aid in identification of the remains, said State Civil Defence coordinator Henguel Pereira.
Franco-Italian ATR, jointly owned by Airbus and Leonardo, is the dominant producer of regional turboprop planes seating 40 to 70 people. ATR told Reuters on Friday that its specialists were "fully engaged" with the investigation into the crash.
In the initial aftermath of the crash, aviation experts speculated that ice buildup could have been a factor, while stating that it was too soon to draw conclusions. The crash has been compared to American Eagle Flight 4184, also involving an ATR 72, in which the pilots lost control after the aircraft encountered severe icing conditions. ATR had since improved the de-icing systems used on its aircraft. The aircraft used for Flight 2283 had a system of rubber tubes on the wings that could inflate and deflate to break up ice.
The Brazilian Aeronautical Accidents Investigation and Prevention Centre (CENIPA) has launched an investigation into the crash. Investigators from the French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) and Canadian Transportation Safety Board (TSB) also joined the investigation, representing the country where the aircraft and engines, the ATR 72 and the Pratt and Whitney Canada PW127M, were manufactured respectively.
Sources: Reuters, Globo News
Aircraft
The aircraft involved, registered as PS-VPB, was a 14-year-old twin-engine turboprop ATR 72-500 with serial number 908, powered by two Pratt & Whitney Canada PW127M engines. It was acquired by Voepass in September 2022 from Indonesian carrier Pelita Air Service.
Crew and passengers
The pilot in command of the flight was Captain Danilo Santos Romano, age 35 and the co-pilot was First Officer Humberto de Campos Alencar e Silva, age 61. The flight attendants were Débora Soper Ávila, age 28 and Rubia Silva de Lima, age 41. All the passengers and crew were Brazilian. Three of the passengers had dual citizenship with Venezuela and one with Portugual.
The victims included eight doctors, including six oncologists who were traveling to a cancer conference in São Paulo, four professors from Western Paraná State University, two staff members of the Federal University of Technology – Paraná and one child. At least 10 ticketed passengers failed to board the flight because they were waiting at the wrong gate.
The aircraft was traveling from Cascavel, in Paraná, to the city of Guarulhos, in São Paulo State. In the area of the crash, there was an active SIGMET advisory for severe icing from 12 000 to 21 000 feet (3 700 to 6 400m). Meteorological reports at the time of the accident indicated that areas of turbulence, thunderstorms and icing were present in areas surrounding the accident. The Brazilian Air Force said in a statement that the flight did not declare an emergency.
According to Flightradar24, the aircraft was cruising at 17 000 feet (5 200m) when, at 13h21 local time, the aircraft experienced a brief loss of altitude and then briefly gained altitude. Shortly thereafter, the aircraft entered what appeared to be a flat spin and a steep and terminal descent. The last data transmission and loss of radar contact occurred at 13h22, before the crash. ADS-B data indicated that the aircraft had reached a maximum vertical descent rate of 24 000 feet per minute (120m/s).
Firefighters reported that the plane crashed in Vinhedo in the state of São Paulo, 76 kilometres (47mi) northwest of the city of São Paulo. The plane crashed near a condominium in the Capela neighbourhood. Despite earlier reports of several houses being hit by the plane, it crashed in the front yard of a house in a gated community and nobody on the ground was killed or injured. Videos of the aircraft before it crashed showed it in a downward flat spin, in a slight nose-down orientation and were widely shared on social media. Brazilian television news channel GloboNews interrupted Olympics coverage to broadcast from the area around the crash, showing fire and smoke rising from the plane fuselage.
All 62 people on board the aircraft, 58 passengers and four crew, were killed, along with a dog brought on board by the Venezuelan passengers. Most of the bodies found in the crash site were charred, making the identification of the victims difficult. An eyewitness reported seeing three bodies ejected from the plane and falling into a backyard; this was later refuted by firefighters, who stated that no bodies had been ejected and all were found in their seats.
CENIPA's head, Marcelo Moreno, said on the day of the crash that both flight recorders, the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and the flight data recorder (FDR), had been recovered and were in CENIPA's possession.
The bodies of the victims, 34 males and 28 females, were taken to the Central Medicolegal Institute in São Paulo for processing. The bodies of the pilot and co-pilot were identified earlier in the day, said Dario Pacheco, mayor of Vinhedo.
By 11 August, local emergency services reported that all bodies had been removed from the crash site and the wreckage had been handed over to CENIPA for further investigation. On the same day, CENIPA announced that flight recorder data had been downloaded and was being analysed.
Four people with dual citizenship were among the victims, three Venezuelans and one Portuguese woman, said regional carrier Voepass, which operated the aircraft. The Venezuelans were a four-year-old boy, his mother and grandmother, local outlet Globo News reported. The boy's dog was also on the flight, which the family was taking to later head to Colombia, according to the outlet.
Authorities used seat assignments, physical characteristics, documents and belongings such as cell phones to identify the victims, firefighter Maycon Cristo said at the crash site earlier on Saturday as the bodies were being pulled from the wreckage.
Relatives of the victims were brought to Sao Paulo to provide DNA samples to aid in identification of the remains, said State Civil Defence coordinator Henguel Pereira.
Franco-Italian ATR, jointly owned by Airbus and Leonardo, is the dominant producer of regional turboprop planes seating 40 to 70 people. ATR told Reuters on Friday that its specialists were "fully engaged" with the investigation into the crash.
In the initial aftermath of the crash, aviation experts speculated that ice buildup could have been a factor, while stating that it was too soon to draw conclusions. The crash has been compared to American Eagle Flight 4184, also involving an ATR 72, in which the pilots lost control after the aircraft encountered severe icing conditions. ATR had since improved the de-icing systems used on its aircraft. The aircraft used for Flight 2283 had a system of rubber tubes on the wings that could inflate and deflate to break up ice.
The Brazilian Aeronautical Accidents Investigation and Prevention Centre (CENIPA) has launched an investigation into the crash. Investigators from the French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) and Canadian Transportation Safety Board (TSB) also joined the investigation, representing the country where the aircraft and engines, the ATR 72 and the Pratt and Whitney Canada PW127M, were manufactured respectively.
Sources: Reuters, Globo News
