Plane carrying 62 people crashes in Brazil

A plane carrying 62 people crashed outside the city of São Paulo, Brazil, on Friday evening, killing everyone on board.

The passenger aircraft crashed into a gated residential area in the city of Vinhedo, not far from Sao Paulo, the Brazilian-based airline Voepass said.

It had taken off from Cascavel, Brazil, about 450 miles from Brazil’s largest city, for a nearly two-hour scheduled flight with 58 passengers and four crew members. None survived.

Officials gave no immediate word on any casualties on the ground at the site of the crash, but witnesses at the scene said there were no victims among residents of the neighbourhood.

Recovery of the victims’ remains for “identification” has begun and “will continue throughout the night,” Sao Paulo State Governor Tarcisio de Freitas told reporters.

Footage published on social media appeared to show the plane spiralling as it fell from the sky, but not the moment of impact. It is unclear what caused it to lose altitude.

Brazilian TV network GloboNews released footage of a large area on fire and smoke billowing from what appeared to be a plane fuselage. Earlier it had shown the plane drifting down vertically, spiralling as it fell.

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At an event in southern Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva asked the crowd to stand and observe a minute of silence as he shared the news.

Several people filmed the aircraft from their gardens in Vinhedo as it headed towards the ground.

One video showed most of the body of the plane destroyed by fire with the exception of the cockpit.

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“I thought it was going to fall in our yard. It was scary,” eye witness Ana Lucia told reporters near the crash site.

Firefighters, military police and the civil defence authority in the state of Sao Paulo dispatched teams to the crash site.

Sao Paulo’s public security secretary Guilherme Derrite said the plane’s black box was found, apparently intact.

One passenger who was due to board the flight was saved after arriving at the airport too late.

Adriano Assis told TV Globo, “I was told I couldn’t board because I didn’t arrive here one hour before the flight. I even argued with the officer. This saved my life”.

A second would-be passenger said: “I got here early, but there was no information about the flight. I waited and waited.

“At 11am I spoke to a member of staff and he told me it was too late to board. I begged him to let me board, but he said I couldn’t. He put me on a later flight. I’m still shaking.”

Voepass said it was taking “all measures to support those involved” in the accident on Flight 2283, PS-VSB plane.

“There is still no confirmation on how the accident occurred,” the airliner said.

It has released a list of all the passengers on board and said it would provide “support via telephone” to pass on information to family members.

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According to data from Flightradar24, the plane lost signal around 1.30pm local time (5.30pm UK).

It encountered severe weather and icing between 12,000 feet and 21,000 feet as it approached its final destination.

Data sent from the plane indicated it was diving at 8,000 to 24,000 feet per minute in the last 60 seconds of the flight, the website said.