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(Al Jazeera) Brazilian authorities are trying to determine the cause of a plane crash in Sao Paulo state that killed all 62 passengers and crew on board, in one of the worst aviation accidents in the South American country’s history.
Civil protection teams worked through the night Saturday to recover the bodies of passengers and crew members of a Volpass Air flight that died in a fire near the city of Vinhedo.
The Sao Paulo state government said that as of Saturday morning, at least 21 bodies had been recovered from the scene, and two of the victims had been identified at the scene. All the bodies were taken to the Sao Paulo police morgue.
The plane, an ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop aircraft of local airline Voepass, was carrying 58 passengers and four crew members on its way to Sao Paulo International Airport when it crashed on Friday.
The airline had initially revised the death toll down to 61, but revised it back up to 62 on Saturday after discovering a passenger who was not on the original list.
Al Jazeera’s Monica Yanakiou, reporting from Sao Paulo, said: “This person was a passenger but for technical reasons he has not been identified and therefore does not appear in the list published last night.”
Firefighter Maycon Cristo said at the crash site on Saturday that the bodies’ location on the crashed plane, physical features, documents and cellphones were being used to assist with identification.
He added: “Once we have collected all the evidence, we will extract the victims from the wreckage and transport them to Sao Paulo in vehicles.”
Hengel Pereira, coordinator of the Sao Paulo state government’s civil protection agency, said relatives of the victims have also traveled to Sao Paulo to help provide genetic material for DNA identification of body parts and other information about the deceased.
As the rescue effort continues, questions continue to arise about the cause of the crash.
Brazilian TV network Globo’s meteorological center reported on Friday that “it has been confirmed that ice may have formed in the Vinhedo region.” Local media quoted experts as saying that ice may have been the cause of the phenomenon.
Lt. Col. Carlos Henrique Baldi of the Brazilian Air Force’s Center for the Investigation and Prevention of Air Crashes told reporters at a news conference on Friday that it was too early to tell whether ice was to blame for the crash.
The aircraft “has been certified to fly in severe icing conditions in several countries, including countries where, unlike us, the effects of icing are more severe,” said Baldi, head of the center’s investigation department.
Brazilian aviation expert Lito Sosa also warned that weather conditions alone may not be enough to explain the crash.
“Analyzing an air crash solely through images can lead to erroneous conclusions,” Sosa told The Associated Press by phone.
“But we could see the aircraft was losing support and had no horizontal speed. There was no way to regain control of the aircraft in this flat spin.”
Sao Paulo Public Security Secretary Guilherme DeRette told reporters in Vinhedo on Friday that the plane’s black box had been found and appeared to be in good condition.
Meanwhile, French-Italian aircraft manufacturer ATR said in a statement that it had been informed of the crash involving its ATR 72-500 model and that company experts were “fully supporting the investigation and customers”.
The ATR 72 is usually used for short-haul flights. These aircraft are manufactured by a joint venture between Airbus of France and Leonardo SpA of Italy.
Friday’s crash was the deadliest since the 2007 crash of a Brazilian TAM airline that killed 199 people. TAM later merged with Chile’s LAN to become LATAM.
It is also the world’s worst air disaster since January 2023, when a Nepali Yeti Airlines plane stalled and crashed during landing, killing 72 people. That plane was also an ATR 72, and the final report attributed the accident to pilot error.
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