VINHEDO: Emergency crews on Saturday fished 50 bodies from the site of a plane crash in Brazil’s Sao Paulo state that killed all 62 people on board as authorities combed through the blackened wreckage to try to determine what caused the plane’s dramatic crash.
Video footage showed the ATR 72-500 plane in a sickening downward spin on Friday before it crashed into a residential area in the town of Vinhedo, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of the city of Sao Paulo.
The plane, which was falling almost vertically, landed on its belly and burst into flames with such force that it was almost “flattened,” Sao Paulo Fire Lt. Olivia Perroni Cazo said.
Voepass airline said there were 62 people on board, not 61 as previously reported.
All 62 were Brazilian, the airline said, although at least one appeared to have dual citizenship. The Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Saturday the X that one of its citizens was among the victims.
There were no casualties on the ground.
The fiery crash turned the plane’s fuselage into a mass of twisted metal, and persistent overnight rain complicated the recovery efforts of about 200 workers.
“So far, 50 bodies have been removed from the crash site and two have already been identified” using fingerprints, the Sao Paulo state government said.
Vinhedo Mayor Dario Pacheco said the bodies were the pilot and co-pilot, with many other bodies badly burned.
The dead are being taken to the main mortuary in Sao Paulo and investigators have been collecting DNA from relatives of the victims to aid identification.
The twin-engine turboprop, built by aviation firm ATR, was flying from Cascavel in the southern state of Paraná to Guarulhos International Airport in Sao Paulo.
According to the website Flight Radar 24, the plane flew for about an hour at an altitude of 5,180 meters until 13:21 (1621 GMT), when it began to lose altitude at a catastrophic rate.
Radar contact was lost at 1:22 p.m., the Brazilian air force said. It said the flight crew “never declared an emergency or were in adverse weather conditions”.
The Brazilian Center for the Investigation and Prevention of Air Accidents (CENIPA) has opened an investigation into the cause of the crash. Its experts in Brasilia are already analyzing data from two black boxes recovered from the wreckage, containing cabin conversations and in-flight data, center head Marcelo Moreno said.
