Recovery Efforts Continue after Plane Crash in Brazil

Aug. 12, 2024
The ATR 72 aircraft operated by Brazilian airline VoePass was en route from Cascavel in the state of Paraná to São Paulo when it crashed into the residential area in the city of Vinhedo.

RIO DE JANEIRO — A day after a passenger plane crashed in a residential area in the greater metropolitan region of the Brazilian city of São Paulo, the bodies were being recovered and identified on Saturday.

"We assume that all bodies will be removed by the end of the day," Carlos Palhares, director of the National Institute of Criminology, told the media.

So far, 31 bodies have been recovered, the news website G1 reported, citing the civil protection department.

The accident claimed the lives of 62 people. The airline VoePass initially reported this number, then corrected it to 61 hours later, and on Saturday morning increased it back up to 62. One passenger's name initially could not be found on the boarding list due to a technical problem, G1 reported.

Among the victims, according to the report, were a father and his 3-year-old daughter who wanted to spend Father's Day — celebrated on Sunday in Brazil — together. There were also assistant doctors, businessmen and professors, G1 reported.

Both the flight data recorder and the voice recorder — the so-called black box — were found by the Brazilian Air Force, said Marcelo Moreno, head of the Centre for Investigation and Prevention of Aviation Accidents.

Whether the devices could provide information about the cause of the crash depended on the degree of their damage, he said.

No one on board survived the crash, which occurred early Friday afternoon.

The ATR 72 aircraft operated by Brazilian airline VoePass was en route from Cascavel in the state of Paraná to São Paulo when it crashed into the residential area in the city of Vinhedo just to the northwest of São Paulo shortly before reaching its destination.

Data from the platform Flightradar 24 suggested that the plane descended almost 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) in less than a minute.

There had been no statement of an emergency of any kind before the crash, Moreno said.

Some experts believe that ice may have formed on the wings, which could turn an aircraft into a "rock without lift," Brazilian news website Uol wrote.

A warning over possible ice formation had been in place for the location of the crash, according to the report.

Other experts did not rule out the possibility that several causes were behind the crash.

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