International News – What We Know About the Crash of VoePass Flight 2283 in Brazil

A passenger plane carrying 61 people crashed on Friday outside São Paulo, Brazil. No one on board survived.

The plane crashed in the yard of a home, but it did not hit any residences and no injuries were reported among people on the ground, officials said.

Here is what we know about the crash:

The plane was on its way to São Paulo.

VoePass Flight 2283 took off from Cascavel, in southern Brazil, at 11:46 a.m., the airline said. It was headed east to Guarulhos airport, just outside São Paulo.

Near its destination, the plane’s transponder signaled that it was descending quickly from its cruising altitude of 17,000 feet, according to Flightradar24, a provider of flight data. For about a minute, the transponder reported losing altitude at a rate of between 8,000 feet and 24,000 feet per minute, the company said.

Officials said that the pilots sent no emergency signal.

There were 89 seconds between the indication of a problem to the final data received from the aircraft at 1:22 p.m., Flightradar24 said. The plane crashed in Vinhedo, a small city northwest of São Paulo, the airline said.

Videos showed the plane spiraling down.

Videos filmed by people on the ground in Vinhedo showed the aircraft slowly spinning horizontally as it fell from the sky. The loud rumbling of a plane’s engine could be heard. After the plane disappeared from view near a gated community, a giant plume of black smoke was seen rising from the spot.

One video showed a house on fire and a yard full of debris, including a shredded fuselage, twisted metal, and part of the cockpit.

The plane was an ATR 72.

The aircraft was a 14-year-old ATR 72, a twin-engine turboprop. Brazilian officials said that it was in compliance with the country’s regulations.

It was operated by VoePass, a small Brazilian airline serving midsize cities in Brazil. The airline said all of the plane’s systems were operating correctly when it took off.

The same plane had flown from São Paulo to Cascavel earlier on Friday, according to Flightradar24.

ATR is a joint venture of two European manufacturers, Airbus and Leonardo, specializing in turboprop planes. There were 1,200 ATR aircraft in service globally as of March 2023, according to the company.

The cause is unknown.

The airline and Brazilian officials said they were investigating what had gone wrong. Aviation safety experts regularly warn against speculating before investigations have concluded. Such inquiries typically take months and even years.

Previously, icy conditions have contributed to crashes of other turboprop planes. In 1994, an ATR 72 operated by American Eagle crashed in Indiana, killing all 68 people on board. A federal investigation blamed the manufacturer for not disclosing enough about the model’s vulnerability to ice, leading ATR to add more ice protection equipment to the aircraft.

Flightradar24 said that there was an active warning for severe icing in the area where the plane lost control on Friday, in addition to meteorological reports of turbulence and thunderstorms.

The crash killed everyone on the plane.

There were 57 passengers and four crew members on board. The airline published a list of their names in a statement.