ATR-72 plane crash in Brazil, spinning before it crashed

A regional turboprop plane crashed in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The plane killed 57 passengers and 4 cabin crew.

Regional airline Voepass said the plane, bound for Sao Paulo international airport, took off from Cascavel, in Parana state, and crashed at around 1.30pm (1630 GMT ) in the town of Vinhedo, about 80 km northwest of Sao Paulo.

A video shared on social media showed the ATR-72 aircraft spinning out of control as it crashed behind trees near houses, followed by a huge plume of black smoke.

One resident, Daniel de Lima, said he heard a loud noise before looking outside his condominium in Vinhedo and seeing the plane in a horizontal spiral.

“It was spinning, but it wasn’t moving forward. Soon it fell from the sky and exploded,” he said Reutersannounced Saturday (10/8).

Municipal officials in Valinhos, near Vinhedo, said a house in a local condominium complex was damaged after the plane crashed in his backyard. No residents were injured.

“I’m almost certain that the pilot was trying to avoid the surrounding neighborhood, which is densely populated,” said de Lima.

The plane’s unusual final turn before touching down sparked widespread curiosity among aviation experts, leading some to speculate that ice had formed on the plane or that an engine had failed, but investigators that it was too early to determine the cause of the accident.

[Gambas:Twitter]

“There is expected to be ice (at the altitude where the plane flew), but it is within an acceptable range,” Voepass operations chief Marcel Moura said at a press conference.

“But the plane is sensitive to ice, that could be a starting point,” Moura said, adding that the plane’s antifreeze system, along with all other systems, was deemed to be working. before it was removed.

Brazilian aviation engineer and accident investigator Celso Faria de Souza told Reuters that an accumulation of ice could have caused the plane to stall and spin as it did.

US aviation safety expert Anthony Brickhouse said investigators would look at things like the weather and whether the engines and controls were working properly before the crash.

“From what I saw, it was clearly what we call a loss of control,” he said.

Flightradar data showed a significant change in speed before the crash, said US aviation safety adviser and former commercial pilot John Cox, warning that he wanted to confirm the data but that something “very significant” caused the plane to spin when he fell

“There appears to have been a catastrophic event before they lost control,” he said.

(bln/bln)