Passenger Plane Crashes in Brazil, Killing All 61 on Board

A passenger plane carrying 61 people plunged in a flat spin captured on video into a residential area near São Paulo, Brazil on Friday, killing everyone on board in the country’s worst crash in nearly two decades.

Brazilian carrier Voepass said the plane had taken off from the city of Cascavel in the southern state of Paraná, about 450 miles from its destination at São Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport. The plane fell in the city of Vinhedo, the airline said, with no confirmed cause.

About 60 miles away from the airport, the aircraft began plummeting. Its transponder recorded vertical drop speeds between 8,000 feet and 24,000 feet a minute in the final 60 seconds of the flight, according to the aviation-tracking site Flightradar24.

Videos on social media showed a plane turning and spiraling as it fell from the sky, followed by a plume of black smoke.

A nearby resident, Lourdes Astolfo, 60 years old, said she heard what she thought was a loud truck coming toward her. She looked up, saw the plane and screamed.

“The plane was coming from the left to the right and then it went left again,” Astolfo said. “When it exploded all we could see was black smoke and flames…it was horrific.”

Voepass said there were 57 passengers and four crew members on board. The plane crash is the country’s worst since 2007 when 199 people died after a plane skidded off the end of the runway during heavy rain in the middle of São Paulo.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva interrupted an event to announce the crash.

“I have terrible news to share,” he said, asking attendees to stand and observe a minute of silence for the victims. “It appears that all passengers have died.”

The scene of the crash, Vinhedo, is a wealthy city on the outskirts of São Paulo. Photos showed fragments of the plane scattered next to a resident’s swimming pool in Recanto Florido, an upmarket residential complex in Vinhedo. While the family was at home at the time of the crash, no one was hurt as parts of the plane hurtled into their backyard, city officials said.

Verified video footage showed another house in flames as nearby plane wreckage burned. Firefighters used white flame retardant to extinguish the flaming fuselage and cockpit burning in the midst of homes, according to footage verified by Storyful.

Brazil’s national aviation authority said it is monitoring Voepass’s response to victims and working to ensure that the company takes the necessary steps for an investigation into what caused the crash. Authorities said late Friday they had found the plane’s flight data recorder, or black box, and would release further information soon.

The ATR 72-500, a twin-engine turboprop plane that was built in 2010, took a rapid plunge. The aircraft had been flying at an elevation of 17,000 feet before the crash, and there were active warnings of severe icy conditions around that elevation, according to the Flightradar24 site.

Brazil authorities haven’t determined the cause of the crash, and an investigation could take months.

Aviation experts were quick to point to the potential role of the build-up of ice. The plane’s horizontal spinning—seen on videos widely shared on social media—suggested the plane had suddenly lost velocity and went into a stall, said Franco Rinaldi, a commercial-aviation specialist and consultant in Argentina.

“If the plane spins and starts to fall like that, it’s because it lost the speed that kept it in the air,” said Rinaldi, who called the plane’s descent “very strange.”

Icing could potentially cause a loss of control and spin, said John Cox, a pilot and aviation safety consultant. Pilots are trained to counteract such conditions and could descend to lower altitude where the air is warmer, he said.

Flight’s final 10 minutes

Cox cautioned against jumping to any conclusions and said Brazil has skilled accident investigators who would likely determine a probable cause of the accident in a year or more.

“This one’s really unusual,” Cox said. “I haven’t seen an airplane do a spin like that in a long time.”

The European-made plane was produced 14 years ago by ATR, a joint venture between Airbus and Italy’s Leonardo. The twin-turboprop engines were manufactured by Pratt & Whitney, according to ATR. The plane’s standard configuration seats 68 people.

Voepass is a small, regional airline mainly based in the São Paulo, Brazil region that was founded in 1995 by a bus-company magnate.

The company didn’t immediately give any information on the people on board.

Kejal Vyas and Andrew Tangel contributed to this article.