A plane that was carrying 62 of people crashed near Sao Paulo, Brazil, officials confirmed Friday.
A plane that was carrying 62 people crashed near Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Friday as officials said there that everyone on board is presumed dead.
Firefighters, military police, and the the country’s civil defense authority dispatched crews to the crash site in Vinhedo, the government said in a
statement on its website. It confirmed that 58 passengers and four crew members were on board.
Video footage uploaded
online showed a plane spiraling downward. After the plane disappears behind the trees, a large explosion with black smoke can be seen, according to the footage.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in a video posted on X that it appears that all passengers on the plane died in the crash.
“I would like everyone to stand up so that we can observe a minute of silence because a plane has just crashed in the city of Vinhedo, in Sao Paulo, with 58 passengers and 4 crew members and it appears they all died,” he said, according to a translation from Portuguese into English. He did not disclose where he obtained that information.
The City of Vinhedo, where the plane crash,
told Globo that everyone on board the plane died in the incident. Osmir Cruz, an official with the Vinhedo government, said the aircraft crashed near a residence, but no injuries were reported on the ground.
Data from Flightradar24
shows that the plane, an ATR-72-500 turboprop passenger jet, was operated by the Voepass airline, which also said in a statement to local media that 62 people were on board. It left Cascavel and was traveling to Sao Paulo when it lost its signal at around 1:30 p.m. local time.
Local officials told Brazilian media that the plane went down in a residential area where the plane crashed, while Brazilian channel Globo showed aerial footage of an area that was on fire along with a destroyed plane fuselage.
Transponder data shows the plane was dropping at a speed of between 8 and 24 feet per minute during the final 60 seconds of the flight, FlightRadar24
said. And in the area where the plane crashed, there was an active warning for icing between 12,000 and 21,000 feet elevation, according to the website, and the plane was flying at 17,000 feet when it started going down.
In a statement, Voepass
told Brazilian media outlets that “there is still no confirmation of how the accident occurred or the current situation of the people on board.”
It continued, “The company is providing information to all its passengers, family members, and employees” through its telephone line.
This is a breaking news story. Check back for more updates later.
