“The company regrets to inform that all 61 people on board flight 2283 died at the scene,” Voepass said in a statement, revising the death toll down from initial assessments of 62 dead. There were 57 passengers and 4 crew were on board, according to Voepass.
“There are no survivors,” Ana Cândida Briski, communications director of the nearby city of Valinhos, also told CNN, adding that there were no ground victims.Emergency responders are working at the site of the crash and an investigation is underway.
Flight tracking data shows that the the ATR 72-500, a twin-engine turboprop plane, dropped 17,000 feet in just one minute, but it is not yet clear why. “There is still no confirmation of how the accident occurred or the current situation of the people on board,” according to a statement by airline Voepass.
Social media videos of the crash showed the plane spiraling out of the sky before hitting the ground as people in the neighborhood shouted in fear. Another video showed the wreckage of the plane in flames on the ground.
Interrupting a speech at an afternoon naval event to address the crash, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called for a minute of silence to mark the apparent deaths of the flight’s passengers and crew.
“I would like everyone to stand up so that we can observe a minute of silence because a plane has just crashed in the city of Vinhedo… and it appears they all died,” he said, in a video of his statement shared on X.
