Workers begin recovering bodies from Brazil plane crash

The wreckage of the airplane that crashed with 61 people on board in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo State, Brazil – Copyright AFP Robyn Beck

Emergency crews on Saturday began removing the victims of a plane crash in Brazil’s Sao Paulo state that killed all 62 people aboard, as authorities sifted through the wreckage to try to determine what caused the plane’s dramatic plunge.

Videos showed the ATR 72-500 plane in a sickening downward spin Friday before it crashed into a residential area of the town of Vinhedo, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Sao Paulo city.

The Voepass airlines said Saturday that verification of the passenger list showed there were 62 people on board, not 61 as reported earlier. All 62 were Brazilian; there were no survivors. 

While some houses at the crash site were damaged, no injuries or deaths were reported among their residents.

The crash transformed the plane’s fuselage into a mass of twisted iron. As of Saturday morning, 16 bodies had been removed, firefighters said. 

In all, some 200 people were working on the recovery effort. The dead are being transported to the Sao Paulo morgue.

The normally peaceful, wooded enclave where the plane came down was swarming Saturday with police cars, ambulances and firetrucks.

A steady overnight rain complicated recovery work, which could “take days,” according to Captain Maycon Cristo, a spokesman for local firefighters. 

The twin-engine turboprop, built by French-Italian aviation firm ATR, was on a flight from Cascavel in southern Parana state to Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos international airport.

The company said its experts will assist in the investigation.

According to the Flight Radar 24 website, the plane flew for about an hour at 17,000 feet (5,180 meters), until at 1:21 pm (1621 GMT) it began rapidly losing altitude.

Radar contact was lost at 1:22 pm, the Brazilian air force reported.

Brazil’s Aeronautical Accidents Investigation and Prevention Center (CENIPA) has opened an inquiry into the cause of the crash.

Its investigators on Friday recovered the “black box” containing flight data that might be useful in the inquiry. 

– ‘No technical problems’ –

The plane had been in use since 2010 and was in compliance with current standards, the National Civil Aviation Agency said, adding that the four crew members were all fully certified.

Voepass’s operations director, Marcel Moura, said the plane had undergone routine maintenance the night before the accident and that “no technical problems” were found. 

Residents of the neighborhood where the plane fell said they had heard a loud noise and then watched in horror as the plane came down in an almost vertical free-fall.

Videos showed an enormous cloud of smoke rising from the scene.

Military police told local media there were no casualties on the ground, and that fires sparked by the crash had been brought under control. 

It was one of the worst aviation accidents in the country’s history.

In 2007, an Airbus A320 of Brazil’s TAM airlines overran a runway at Sao Paulo’s Congonhas airport and crashed into a warehouse, killing all 187 on board and 12 runway workers.

Two years later, an Air France A330 on a Rio de Janeiro-to-Paris flight crashed into the Atlantic. All 228 people on board died.