New Delhi: At least 62 people were killed when a Voepass Airlines flight crashed in a residential area of Vinho on Friday night. However, Rio de Janeiro resident Adriano Assis narrowly escaped disaster, having missed the flight due to a mix-up at the airport.
Sharing a video on X, one user wrote: “This man was not allowed to board the plane that just crashed in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo, Brazil because he arrived LATE. He argued with the man at the gate but ended up hugging him after hearing that the plane had crashed. This is unbelievable.”
Assis nearly had an accident, as he arrived late to the airport after his shift at a local hospital. In an interview with Brazilian news outlet TV Globo, he revealed that he arrived at the check-in counter at 9:40 a.m., but missed the 11:40 a.m. flight from Cascavel to Guarulhos due to a mix-up at the airport.
When Assis learned of the accident, he thanked the airport staff and hugged the official who had prevented him from boarding the flight.
“I arrived at 9:40, the gate was closed, but the flight was leaving. I was working at the Toledo Regional Hospital. When I arrived, I waited to see if they had opened, normally there is always someone at the counter, but there was no one. I stayed upstairs, drank my coffee and waited. The microphone didn’t say anything, the signs didn’t say anything about the flight either. When I got off it was half past ten, there was a huge queue here,” Assis explained.
He added: “I waited and when it was about 10:41, the guy told me he wasn’t going in. At that point, I argued with him and so on, and that was it. He saved my life. I hug him because he did his job. If he hadn’t done his job, maybe I wouldn’t be doing this interview today.”
Plane crash in Brazil: all 61 people on board confirmed dead
A passenger plane crashed into a gated residential community in Sao Paulo state, Brazil, on Friday, killing all 61 people on board and leaving a smoldering pile of wreckage, authorities and the airline said. Authorities did not say whether anyone was killed on the ground in the neighborhood where the plane landed in the town of Vinhedo, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of the Sao Paulo metropolis. But witnesses at the scene said there were no casualties among local residents.
Voepass airline said its plane, a twin-engine turboprop ATR 72, was heading to Sao Paulo Guarulhos International Airport with 57 passengers and four crew on board when it crashed in Vinhedo. The company provided a flight manifest with the names of the passengers, but not their nationalities. An earlier statement said there were 58 passengers on board.
“The company regrets to report that all 61 people on board Flight 2283 died on the spot,” Voepass said in a statement. “At this time, Voepass is prioritizing the provision of unrestricted assistance to the families of the victims and effectively collaborating with the authorities to determine the cause of the accident.” It was the deadliest air accident since January 2023, when 72 people died aboard a Yeti Airlines plane in Nepal that stalled and crashed while making its approach to land. That plane was also an ATR 72, and the final report blamed pilot error.
At a rally in southern Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva asked the crowd to stand and observe a minute of silence as he delivered the news. On Friday evening, he declared three days of mourning.
Firefighters, military police and state civil defense sent teams to the scene. Sao Paulo Public Security Secretary Guilherme Derrite spoke to reporters and confirmed that no survivors had been found. He also said the plane’s black box had been recovered.
“I thought it was going to fall in our yard,” a resident and witness who gave her name only as Ana Lucia de Lima told reporters near the crash site. “It was terrifying, but thank God there were no victims among the neighbors. However, it seems that the 62 people who were inside the plane were the real victims.” Paraná state governor Ratinho Júnior told reporters in Vinho that many of the passengers were doctors from his state attending a seminar.
“These were people who were used to saving lives, and now they lost theirs in such tragic circumstances,” Junior said, adding that he had friends on board. “It’s a sad day.” A video obtained by The Associated Press from a witness and verified shows at least two bodies strewn among the burning wreckage.
Brazilian television network GloboNews showed aerial images of an area where smoke was billowing from the wrecked fuselage of a plane. Previous GloboNews images showed the plane in a nosedive.
A report from Globo’s meteorological center said “the possibility of ice formation in the Vinhedo region has been confirmed,” and local media cited analysts who pointed to ice formation as a possible cause of the accident.
But aviation expert Lito Sousa warned that weather conditions alone might not be enough to explain why the plane went down the way it did.
Disclaimer:
The information contained in this post is for general information purposes only. We make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information, products, services, or related graphics contained on the post for any purpose.
We respect the intellectual property rights of content creators. If you are the owner of any material featured on our website and have concerns about its use, please contact us. We are committed to addressing any copyright issues promptly and will remove any material within 2 days of receiving a request from the rightful owner.