The regional turboprop plane went into what aviation experts said was a straight spin before crashing in a residential area near Sao Paulo, Brazil, yesterday, killing all 61 people on board, Reuters reports.
Regional carrier "Voepass" said the plane, which was flying to Sao Paulo's international airport, took off from Cascavel, in the state of Parana, and crashed around 13.30:80 p.m. in the city of Vinhedo, some XNUMX kilometers northwest of Sao Paulo.
In a video posted on social media, the ATR-72 plane went out of control as it fell behind a clump of trees near houses, followed by a large plume of black smoke.
A resident who happened to be near the crash site, Danijel de Lima, said he heard a loud noise before looking outside his condominium in Vinhedo to see the plane in a horizontal spiral.
"It was rotating but not moving forward," he told Reuters.
"Shortly after that, it fell from the sky and exploded," says de Lima.
City officials in Valinhos, near Windhead, said a home in a local condominium complex was damaged after the plane crashed into her yard.
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None of the residents were injured.
"I almost believe that the pilot tried to avoid the nearby neighborhood, which is densely populated," de Lima said.
The plane's unusual final spin before it hit the ground has sparked interest among aviation experts, leading some to speculate that the plane may have iced up or suffered engine failure, but investigators said it was too early to determine the cause of the crash .
"Ice is forecast today (at flight altitudes), but within an acceptable range," Voepas chief operating officer Marcel Moore said at a press conference.
"But the plane is sensitive to ice, that could be the starting point," Mura said, adding that the plane's de-icing system, along with all other systems, was assessed to be operational before takeoff.
Brazilian aviation engineer and accident investigator Celso Faria de Souza told Reuters that ice buildup could have caused the plane to stall and spiral the way it did.
An ATR-72 model plane crashed in Indiana in 1994, killing 68, after the plane was unable to land due to ice buildup.
Another ATR-72 stalled in Norway in 2016 after ice accumulated on the plane, but the pilot managed to regain control of the plane.
An ATR-27 also crashed in Nepal in 2023, and the final report attributed it to pilot error.
The head of Brazil's CENIPA air accident investigation center said the plane's so-called "black box" containing voice recordings and flight data was found at the crash site.
U.S. aviation safety expert Anthony Brickhouse said investigators will look at things like the weather and whether the engines and controls were working properly before the crash.
"From what I saw, it was definitely what we would call a loss of control," he said.
Flightradar data showed significant rotations in airspeed before the crash, said US aviation safety consultant and former commercial pilot John Cox, cautioning that he would like to verify the data but that something "really significant" happened to cause it. turning the plane when it crashed.
"It looks like there may have been some catastrophic event before that loss of control," he said.
CENIPA head Marcelo Moreno told a news conference that initial reports indicated that the aircraft did not contact traffic control to report an emergency.
Voepass, Brazil's fourth-largest airline by market share, initially reported 62 people on board.
Local newspaper "Globo News" interviewed two men who said they missed their flight.
"There were a total of 57 passengers and four crew members on the plane," Voepass said.
All were Brazilian citizens, the carrier reported.
Some of the passengers were doctors from Parana who were on their way to a seminar, Governor Ratinjo Junior told reporters.
"These were people who were used to saving lives, and now they lost theirs in such tragic circumstances," he said.
Franco-Italian ATR, jointly owned by Airbus AIR.PA and Leonardo LDOF.MI, is the dominant manufacturer of regional turboprops with a capacity of 40 to 70 people.
ATR told Reuters its experts were "fully engaged" in investigating the accident and its clients.
The plane's engine was a PV 127 manufactured by Pratt & Whitney Canada, its parent company RTKS Corp RTKS.N confirmed to Reuters.
RTKS announced that it has offered to assist in the investigation. French and Canadian investigators will participate in the investigation, Moreno said.
The European safety regulator also said it would offer technical assistance.
The crash is the deadliest in Brazil since 2007 people died in 199 on a flight operated by TAM, which later merged with LAN to become what is now LATAM Airlines.
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