VINHEDO (AP) – Brazilian rescue teams Saturday retrieved the remains of all 62 passengers from the wreckage of a plane crash in Sao Paulo state as families started gathering in the metropolis to identify and bury their loved ones.
Local airline Voepass’ plane, an ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop, was headed for Sao Paulo’s international airport in Guarulhos with 58 passengers and four crew members, when it went down in the city of Vinhedo.
Initially, the company said its plane had 62 passengers, then it revised the number to 61 and early on Saturday it raised the figure once again after it found a passenger named Constantino Thé Maia was not on its original list.
Voepass also said three passengers who held Brazilian identification also carried Venezuelan documents and one had Portuguese.
Sao Paulo state government said in a statement that rescue operations finished at 6.30pm local time, with the identification of the bodies of the pilot and co-pilot by forensics experts. There were 34 male and 28 female bodies in the wreckage, the government said.
Earlier, Maycon Cristo, a spokesman for the local fire department, told journalists in Vinhedo that a winch was used to remove parts of the plane from the ground.
Brazilian authorities began transferring the corpses to the morgue Friday, and called on victims’ family members to bring any medical, X-ray and dental exams to help identify the bodies. Blood tests were also done to help identification efforts.
Images recorded by witnesses showed the aircraft in a flat spin and plunging vertically before smashing to the ground inside a gated community, and leaving an obliterated fuselage consumed by fire. Residents said there were no injuries on the ground.
Rain drizzled down on rescue workers as they recovered the first bodies from the scene in the chill of the Southern Hemisphere’s winter. Some residents of the gated community silently left to spend the night elsewhere. None were spotted returning on Saturday.
It was the world’s deadliest airline crash since January 2023, when 72 people died on board a Yeti Airlines plane in Nepal that stalled and crashed while making its landing approach. That plane also was an ATR 72, and the final report blamed pilot error.
