Vinhedo, Brazil.- Brazilian authorities began removing the bodies of the 62 victims of the plane crash in the interior of the state of Sao Paulo on Saturday and were carrying out tests at the scene to determine the possible causes of the plane’s dramatic nosedive.
The plane crashed on Friday in a residential area in the town of Vinhedo, about 80 km northwest of the city of Sao Paulo.
According to the Vinhedo mayor’s office, 24 bodies have already been removed from the wreckage of the plane’s fuselage, which caught fire after the impact.
The remains were “charred” and so far only “two have been identified: the pilot and the co-pilot,” Mayor Darío Pacheco told reporters.
Some 200 personnel are working on the task. AFP witnessed the coming and going of police patrols, ambulances and fire trucks from the Recanto Florido residential complex, a residential complex nestled in a peaceful wooded area where the plane crashed.
The persistent rain that has fallen since Friday night is adding to the difficulty of the work.
It is a difficult task that could take “even days,” the spokesman for the fire brigade on site, Captain Maycon Cristo, told AFP.
Despite hitting the courtyard of a house, no neighbors were injured.
“It was a feeling of panic, of helplessness… it was really, really sad,” Roberta Henrique, 38, president of the residential association, told AFP.
The inhabitants are “scared, psychologically affected,” she added, moved.
Spectacular collapse
Voepass, the airline that operated the flight, again raised the number of victims to 62 on Saturday after checking the passenger list. All were Brazilian nationals, according to the airline.
The aircraft, manufactured by Franco-Italian company ATR, was travelling from Cascavel, in the state of Paraná (south), to Guarulhos International Airport in Sao Paulo.
Images from Friday showed a large plane nosediving at high speed.
According to flight tracking site Flight Radar 24, the plane flew for nearly an hour at 17,000 feet (5,180 meters) until at 1:21 p.m. local time (4:21 p.m. GMT) it began to lose altitude and in just one minute it plummeted to 4,100 feet (1,250 meters).
The Brazilian Air Force reported that the aircraft lost contact with radar at 1:22 p.m. local time and that the crew at no time “declared an emergency or that they were under adverse weather conditions.”
Brazil’s Aeronautical Accident Prevention and Investigation Center (Cenipa) has opened an investigation to determine the cause of the accident.
Cenipa investigators recovered the black box containing the flight records on Friday for analysis, authorities said.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva declared three days of mourning in the country.
Icing?
Residents of the neighborhood where the accident occurred described hearing a loud noise and then seeing the plane plummeting in free fall.
It then burst into flames and released a huge plume of smoke, according to videos filmed by locals.
According to the National Civil Aviation Agency, the aircraft, which had been flying since 2010, complied with all current regulations and the crew had all valid certificates.
Voepass’s chief operating officer, Marcel Moura, said the plane had undergone “routine maintenance” the night before the crash and was “not experiencing any technical problems.”
Experts have suggested that ice build-up on the plane’s wings may have caused the accident.
Moura admitted that this model from the ATR manufacturer flies “in a zone where it is more sensitive to ice” and that the meteorological conditions on Friday predicted the presence of this element. But “within the acceptable characteristics of the flight,” said Moura.
Manufacturer ATR said in a statement that its specialists “are fully committed to supporting the ongoing research.”
This is the first major air tragedy on Brazilian soil in 17 years.
In 2007, an Airbus A320 of the Brazilian airline TAM failed to land at Sao Paulo’s Congonhas airport and crashed with 187 people on board. The accident left 199 dead, including 12 people working on the runway.
In 2009, an Air France Airbus A-330 disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean after entering a zone of turbulence after taking off from Rio de Janeiro bound for Paris with 228 people on board. There were no survivors.
