Brazil plane crash pilots’ last words revealed
The final words of the pilots in the doomed Brazilian plane crash have been revealed in the flight’s ‘black box’ recording.
World
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The pilots in the doomed Brazilian passenger jet said they needed “more power” to stabilise the plane moments before it crashed in a death spiral, according to the black box recording.
Brazilian TV station Globo reported that investigators had recovered the black box from the Voepass Airline plane, which crashed last Friday and killed all 62 on board.
“What’s going on?” one of the pilots asked before the crash, according to The Daily Mail.
The two-hour transcript of the recording shows that the pilot and co-pilot noticed a drastic loss of altitude about 60 seconds before the crash, according to anonymous sources quoted by Globo.
The aircraft, an ATR 72-500 operated by Voepass airline, was travelling from Cascavel in southern Parana state to Sao Paulo’s international airport when it crashed in Vinhedo.
Images broadcast on local media showed a large plane spinning as it plummeted almost vertically, while other footage showed a large column of smoke rising from the crash site in the residential area.
CRASH VICTIMS NAMED
Boarding Voepass Flight 2283 with her four-year-old son and her mother, Josgleidys Gonzalez had embarked on a long trip that was to take them to her native Venezuela and then onward to Colombia.
But her dreams, and those of everyone else on board, were dashed when the plane crashed this week in Brazil’s Sao Paulo state.
The family, who had emigrated to Brazil to flee economic and political crises, was among the 58 passengers and four crew on the plane on Friday when it dropped from the sky and burst into flames in the town of Vinhedo. All were killed.
Voepass said all the victims were travelling on Brazilian identity documents and one woman was a dual citizen with Portugal.
Local media reports the other victims included doctors travelling to an oncology conference in Sao Paulo, businesspeople returning from a construction event in Parana, professors from a local public university, a civil servant who was going to celebrate Father’s Day with his three-year-old daughter and a digital bodybuilding influencer.
Gonzalez was 25 and her baby Joslan just a few months old when they arrived four years ago in Cascavel, a city of 350,000 in the southern state of Parana.
There she found work as a supermarket cashier, her Brazilian friend Thaiza Evangelista told AFP.
But the family found life in Brazil expensive and had decided to move to Colombia, after a short stop in Venezuela to deal with paperwork.
“They had friends (in Colombia) and wouldn’t have had to pay for housing, because here the most difficult thing is rent,” said the 52-year-old Evangelista, who had helped the family with its final travel preparations.
An animal lover, she had persuaded her friend to bring her six-month dog Luna along – and had even raised funds to pay the extra cost.
This was partly for the sake of young Joslan, she said, who had been “crying non-stop, for he didn’t want to leave her behind.” Evangelista had helped them put together a complicated travel plan: They were first to fly to Sao Paulo, then take another plane to Boa Vista in the north, before getting a ride in a van to the border town of Pacaraima – and finally taking a 12-hour bus ride to their native town of Ciudad Bolivar in Venezuela.
“She sent me a last message at 11:16 (1416 GMT), saying all was well and they were about to get on the plane,” Evangelista said.
But later, to her consternation, she started receiving texts about the crash of a Sao Paulo-bound plane.
“I was desperate … the list (of victims) wasn’t coming out,” she said by telephone from Cascavel, where her friends and neighbours had come together upon hearing the tragic news.
Brazilian airlines Voepass later confirmed that among those on board Flight 2283 were Josgleidys Gonzalez and her son, her mother Maria Gladys Parra, and their dog Luna.
Josgleidys Gonzalez was “a warrior,” her friend said, adding: “She was very well liked. It’s very difficult to keep your sweetness, your honesty and your integrity when you’ve been through so much difficulty.”
Neirelis Orta, a 33-year-old Venezuelan who had also emigrated to Brazil and has lived in Cascavel since February, worked with Gonzalez at the supermarket.
“She had been saving up in order to go get papers” for her son in Venezuela, Orta told AFP.
“It makes me very sad – depriving yourself of so much, of being able to eat or buy a piece of clothing you like because you have a plan, a trip, and then to have your dreams end like that …
“We’re devastated, and all we keep saying is that she didn’t deserve that. She was full of hopes and dreams.
“It’s just awful.”
FLIGHT RECORDERS RECOVERED
Flight recorders have been recovered from the scene of where Voepass Flight 2283 spun out of control and fell out of the sky over Brazil.
It comes as grieving families travel to a Sao Paulo morgue to identify the remains of their loved ones with the assistance of forensic experts.
Authorities have confirmed 34 male and 28 female bodies have been recovered.
The pilot and co-pilot were the first to be identified through fingerprints, Vinhedo Mayor Dario Pacheco said.
Vinhedo, with about 76,000 residents, is located approximately 80km northwest of Sao Paulo.
“The bodies are being taken to the morgue,” the Vinhedo city government told AFP.
Before an official death toll was given, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said during an event that it appeared there were no survivors and called for a moment of silence.
The President declared three days of mourning.
POSSIBLE CAUSE OF CRASH
In a statement, Voepass reported “an accident involving flight 2283.”
The company said it was co-operating with authorities to “determine the causes of the accident,” while giving full assistance to victims’ families.
The plane, a twin-engine turboprop, took off “without any flight restrictions, with all its systems operational,” the statement added.
ATR, a Franco-Italian aircraft maker and Airbus subsidiary, said its experts were working to help investigators.
Voepass’s operations director, Marcel Moura, said the plane had undergone routine maintenance the night before the accident and that “no technical problems” were found.
But experts suggested icing of the plane’s wings may have been behind the accident.
Moura said the plane was a type that flies at an altitude “where there is a greater sensitivity to icing,” but that conditions on Friday were “within acceptable parameters for a flight.”
‘I WAS HAVING LUNCH’
Shocking video posted on social media shows the passenger plane fall out of the sky as it plummeted into a residential suburb, with smoke rising over the tree line moments later.
Images of the aftermath showed burning debris and wreckage strewn over the crash site in Sao Paulo.
BREAKING: Voepass Flight 2283, a large passenger plane, crashes in Vinhedo, Brazil pic.twitter.com/wmpJLVYbB3
— BNO News (@BNONews) August 9, 2024
Nathalie Cicari, who lives near the crash site, told CNN Brasil the impact was “terrifying.”
“I was having lunch, I heard a very loud noise very close by,” she said, describing the sound as drone-like but “much louder.”
“I went out on the balcony and saw the plane spinning. Within seconds, I realised that it was not a normal movement for a plane.”
Cicari was not hurt but had to evacuate her house, which was filled with black smoke from the crash.
“I arrived at the scene and saw many bodies on the ground – many of them,” another witness, Ricardo Rodrigues, told local Band News.
Truck driver Martins Barbosa, 49, was working when he learned of the plane crash, which occurred 150 metres from his home.
“I thought it might have fallen on my house, with my son inside,” he told AFP, adding he felt despondent before learning his family was okay.
Firefighters, military police and state civil defence were deployed at the scene.
Military police on the ground told local media that the accident had not caused any additional casualties at the crash site, and that the fire sparked by the crash had been brought under control.
The plane’s black box “has already been found, apparently preserved,” Sao Paulo state security official Guilherme Derrite told reporters at the scene.
The doomed plane recorded its first flight in April 2010, according to the website planespotters.net.
It was the worst major air disaster in Brazil in 17 years.
In 2007, an Airbus A320 of Brazil’s TAM airlines overran a runway at Sao Paulo’s Congonhas airport and crashed into a warehouse, killing all 187 on board and 12 runway workers.
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