At a briefing Friday afternoon, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said, “I have to be the bearer of really bad news,” and called for a minute of silence to honor the 58 passengers and four crew members aboard the plane that crashed in Vinhedo, a city northwest of São Paulo.
The cause of the crash is unknown, he said, but added, “It appears all have died.”
BREAKING: Voepass Flight 2283, a large passenger plane, crashes in Vinhedo, Brazil pic.twitter.com/wmpJLVYbB3
— BNO News (@BNONews) August 9, 2024
In a social media post, Voepass, a regional airline based in São Paulo state, confirmed that its plane, flight 2283, had crashed. The plane departed from Cascavel, a Brazilian city near the country’s southern border with Paraguay and Argentina, and was headed to Guarulhos, just outside São Paulo, Voepass said in its post.
We are following reports of a crash of a VoePass ATR 72 near São Paulo, Brazil. We are currently processing granular data from this flight. https://t.co/1MwrzhJ0gU pic.twitter.com/ozBx2sL5lZ
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) August 9, 2024
FlightAware data indicated the plane, a twin-engine turboprop ATR-72, departed at 11:50 a.m. local time and was scheduled to land just before 2 p.m.
One woman in Vinhedo, Brazil, said she heard the plane before she saw it.
“I heard a very loud noise, very close to me. I thought it was a drone. I looked up to the sky and saw the plane spinning,” Nathalie Cicari told CNN.
#WATCH : More visuals from the crash site of a Voepass Linhas Aéreas ATR 72-500 plane.#Vinhedo #Brazil #PlaneCrash #Crash #Cascavel #Guarulhos #saopaulo #VoepassAirlines pic.twitter.com/B98fcnZF0R
— upuknews (@upuknews1) August 9, 2024
Another eyewitness, Felipe Magalhaes, told Reuters that he heard the plane as it was falling. Speaking in Portuguese, he said he looked out of his window just as it crashed. He rushed to the wreckage, not just to see but to try and help people in the neighborhood.
“The way it fell—I ran out of the house and went to see where it had fallen and saw it had crashed into the house of a couple of elderly people. We also knew them from church. Terrified and not knowing what to do, I jumped over the wall,” Magalhaes said.
A man who missed the flight told Brazilian news outlet Globo that at least 10 people were waiting at the wrong gate and missed the flight before it took off.
“They said to me, ‘Mister, you’re not getting on this plane because we’re already past the boarding limit.’ I even pressured them a little. ‘Mister, put me on this plane, I have to go,’ then he said, ‘There’s no way, what I can do is rebook your ticket,’” the unnamed man said.
