Plane crashes in Brazil’s Sao Paulo state, all 61 on board killed
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva decries ‘sad news’ and offers condolences to families of victims.
A plane carrying 61 people has crashed outside the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo, killing all onboard, local officials have said.
The Brazilian airline Voepass had confirmed on Friday that the plane crashed northeast of the city of Sao Paulo.
“The company regrets to inform that all 61 people on board flight 2283 died at the site,” Voepass said in a statement. “At this time, Voepass is prioritising provision of unrestricted assistance to the victims’ families and effectively collaborating with authorities to determine the causes of the accident.”
The airline said earlier that 62 people were aboard the flight before updating the number.
Officials in the town of Valinhos also said there were no survivors, and only one home in a local residential complex had been damaged in the area where the plane fell, but none of the residents were hurt.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva expressed condolences for the victims’ families earlier on Friday.
“I must be the bearer of very bad news, and I wanted all to stand up so we can take one minute of silence because a plane just fell in the town of Vinhedos in Sao Paulo … and it seems that all of them passed,” he said at an event shortly after the crash.
“So I’d like to ask for a minute of silence for the victims.”
The news outlet Globo shared images of the flaming wreckage of the plane in the state of Sao Paulo. The Associated Press reported that a video obtained from a bystander and verified by the news agency showed at least two bodies amidst the ruins of the plane.
“It just dropped out of the sky, fell on top of a house; luckily, there was nobody in the house,” Al Jazeera correspondent Monica Yanakiew reported from Rio de Janeiro. “But by the images we’ve been seeing, everyone is really likely to be dead, because the plane was totally destroyed.”
Yanakiew added that the incident is being described as the worst of its kind in modern Brazilian history.
Firefighters, military police, and the country’s civil defence authority have despatched workers to the site of the crash, which has been sealed off by authorities.
“The general director of the Federal Police, Andrei Passos, reported that an investigation and forensics team, with experts in identifying disaster victims,” Globo reported. The outlet also said Sao Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas is travelling to the site of the crash.
The air traffic tracker Flightradar24 said in a social media post that the aircraft was an ATR72-500 built in 2010 and was en route to Sao Paulo from the Cascavel airport in the southern state of Parana.
