Plane with 61 aboard crashes in Brazil, no survivors

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

Sao Paulo: A passenger plane carrying 61 people crashed Friday outside Sao Paulo, Brazil, killing all on board, according to Brazilian authorities.

The airline operating the flight, VoePass, said that Flight 2283 had crashed in the Brazilian city of Vinhedo, not far from its destination of Sao Paulo. The flight had taken off from Cascavel, Brazil, about 450 miles away, for a nearly two-hour scheduled flight that VoePass has been operating daily.

“There is still no confirmation of how the accident occurred,” the airline said in a statement. The airline had earlier said 62 people had been on board.

Officials in Vinhedo said that no one survived the crash. The plane crashed in the yard of a home, but it did not hit any residences, and no one on the ground was injured, officials said.

“It hit really close to a residence, which even had people inside,” Osmir Aparecido Cruz, a top Vinhedo security official, told Brazilian news outlet Globo.

Videos posted online showed a plane spiraling as it dropped from the sky. Some of the videos ended with an enormous black plume of smoke rising from the ground. Others showed what appeared to be the aftermath of the crash, with a destroyed plane and surrounding plants on fire.

Globo, Brazil’s main television network, interrupted Olympics coverage to broadcast aerial images that showed firefighters spraying a smoking gash in the ground, next to the remains of a plane. Two buildings, which appeared to be residences, were feet away.

According to FlightRadar24, a provider of flight data, the plane was an ATR 72, a twin-engine regional turboprop made by ATR, a joint venture of European aerospace manufacturers Airbus and Leonardo. VoePass used the same plane to fly from Sao Paulo to Cascavel earlier Friday, the report added.

Brazilian aviation records show that the plane was manufactured in 2010 and was approved to carry up to 68 passengers.

FlightRadar24 said that in the final minute of the flight, the plane’s transponder reported it was falling between 8,000 and 24,000 feet per minute. The plane had been flying at 17,000 feet just before it dropped from the sky, the company said.

FlightRadar24 also said that in the area where the plane lost control, there was an active warning for severe icing. The formation of ice on a plane during flight can be a dangerous scenario, making an aircraft heavier and reducing its lift.