The Voepass airline plane that crashed on Friday in the Brazilian state of São Paulo in an accident in which all 61 occupants died was in normal flight condition and did not report any emergency, those responsible for the investigation reported.
“It’s all very premature. The only thing we have so far is that there was no communication (from the pilot of the plane) with the control bodies that there would be an emergency,” said the director of the Center for Investigation and Prevention of Air Accidents (Cenipa) of the Brazilian Air Force, Brigadier General Marcelo Moreno.
The officer added at a press conference that the pilot did not contact any control tower to report any problems, so he hopes that the aircraft’s black boxes, already recovered, can provide some clue as to what happened.
According to Moreno, the flight proceeded normally until 1:20 p.m. Brazilian time (4:20 p.m. GMT), when it stopped responding to calls from the São Paulo Approach Control Center, and disappeared from radar a minute later.
The general said it was too early to comment on the various hypotheses that specialists have put forward about the possible causes of the accident, the main one being the possible formation of ice on the aircraft’s wings, which would explain its vertical and spinning fall.
“It is too early to say anything. At this time we cannot say whether that was decisive or not in what happened,” said the director of Cenipa, who clarified that the crashed aircraft has a certificate to fly in those atmospheric conditions (of icing).
According to the military, the plane has devices to prevent ice from forming on its fuselage.
The director of the National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC, regulator), Luiz Ricardo de Souza, said at the same press conference that both the plane and its crew had all the required certificates and were up to date.
“The aircraft was completely in good condition and in normal airworthiness conditions. It complied with all the provisions of the legislation,” said De Souza, referring to the aircraft manufactured in 2010 and operating in Brazil since 2022.
The official added that the crew members also had all their certificates in legal condition and up to date.
The plane, a twin-engine ATR-72-500 model manufactured in France, crashed on Friday afternoon in a residential area in the Brazilian municipality of Vinhedo, in the state of São Paulo.
The plane was travelling between Cascavel and São Paulo and crashed when it was about 80 kilometres from its destination, Guarulhos airport.
Despite landing in a residential area, the plane crashed in the backyards of a residential complex without damaging any buildings or leaving any victims on the ground. EFE
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