General
Plane Carrying 62 People Crashes in Brazil
VoePass Flight 2283 crashed outside São Paulo on Friday afternoon. The status of the passengers and crew is unknown.
A passenger plane carrying 62 people crashed on Friday outside São Paulo, Brazil, the airline operating the flight said.
VoePass, the airline, said that Flight 2283, flying from Cascavel, Brazil, had crashed in the Brazilian city of Vinhedo, not far from its destination of São Paulo. “There is still no confirmation of how the accident occurred nor the current status of passengers who were on board,” the airline said in a statement.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, at an event on Friday, asked for a minute of silence for the people on board. “It seems that all have died,” he said.
Videos posted online showed a plane spiraling slowly as it dropped from the sky. Some of the videos ended with an enormous black plume of smoke rising from the ground. Others showed what appeared to be the aftermath of the crash, with a destroyed plane and surrounding plants on fire.
Globo, Brazil’s main television network, interrupted Olympics coverage to broadcast aerial images that showed firefighters spraying a smoking gash in the ground, next to the shredded remains of a plane. Two buildings, which appeared to be residences, were badly damaged feet away.
Vinhedo’s security secretary said that the plane did not crash into a building and that it did not appear that any people on the ground were injured.
According to FlightRadar24, a provider of flight data, the plane was an ATR 72, a twin-engine regional jet manufactured by ATR, a joint venture of two European aerospace manufacturers, Airbus and Leonardo.
Brazilian aviation records show that the plane was manufactured in 2010, and was approved to carry up to 68 passengers.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Ana Ionova contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro, and Niraj Chokshi from New York.
