Rescuers recover remains of all plane passengers in Brazil as families gather in Sao Paulo

VINHEDO, Brazil (AP) — Brazilian rescue teams on Saturday pulled the remains of all 62 passengers from the wreckage of a plane that crashed in Sao Paulo state, as families began gathering in the metropolis to identify and bury their loved ones.

The plane, operated by local airline Voepass, a twin-engine turboprop ATR 72, was heading to Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos International Airport with 58 passengers and four crew members on board when it crashed in the city of Vinhedo.

READ MORE: The plane crashed into a blazing wreck in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo, killing all 61 people on board.

The company initially said there were 62 passengers on board the plane, then revised that number to 61 and then raised that number again on Saturday morning when it emerged that a passenger named Constantino Thé Maia was not on the original list.

Voepass added that three of the passengers who had Brazilian documents also had Venezuelan documents, and one had Portuguese ones.

The Sao Paulo state government said in a statement that rescue operations ended at 6:30 p.m. local time and that forensic experts had identified the bodies of the pilot and co-pilot. There were 34 men and 28 women on the crashed plane, the government said.

Earlier, Maycon Cristo, a spokesman for the local fire department, told reporters in Vinhedo that a winch was used to lift part of the plane off the ground.

Brazilian authorities began moving bodies to a morgue on Friday and called on victims’ families to provide any medical, X-ray and dental records that would help identify the bodies. Blood tests were also being conducted to aid identification.

Footage captured by witnesses showed the plane in a flat spin and plummeting vertically before crashing into the ground in a gated community, leaving its shattered fuselage consumed by flames. Residents said there were no injuries on the ground.

Rain fell on rescuers as they pulled the first bodies from the scene in the cold of the Southern Hemisphere winter. Some residents of the gated community quietly left to spend the night elsewhere. No one had been seen returning Saturday.

It was the world’s deadliest air disaster since January 2023, when 72 people died aboard a Yeti Airlines plane in Nepal that stalled and crashed while approaching for landing. That plane was also an ATR 72, and the final report blamed pilot error.

Metsul, one of Brazil’s best-known weather firms, said Friday that there were reports of heavy icing in Sao Paulo state at the time of the crash. Local media cited experts who said icing was a possible cause.

A video shared on social media Saturday shows the pilot of Voepass telling passengers on a flight from Guarulhos to the city of Cascavel, the same place where the plane crashed, that the ATR 72 has been flying safely around the world for decades. He also asked passengers to respect the memory of his colleagues and the company and to pray.

“It was a fatal accident. The pilot was a personal friend of mine. I’ve known the entire crew for a long time,” the unidentified pilot said. “We are professionals, we have our families. This tragedy does not only affect those who died in this accident. It affects all of us. We give our whole hearts, our best, to be here and to fulfill our mission, to get you to your destination safely and comfortably.”

Local police restricted access to the main entrance to one of Sao Paulo’s morgues where bodies were being identified from the crash. Some family members arrived on foot, others in minivans. They did not speak to reporters, and local authorities asked not to be filmed during their arrival.

A plane carrying more family members from Paraná state landed at São Paulo’s Guarulhos International Airport in the afternoon, and they also refused to speak to reporters. An airline-sponsored minivan was to transport them to a morgue.

Many family members gathered at a hotel in central Sao Paulo but did not want to talk to the media at this time.

An American Eagle ATR 72-200 crashed on October 31, 1994, and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board determined that the probable cause was ice accumulation as the plane circled in waiting. The plane banked at about 8,000 feet and dived into the ground, killing all 68 people on board. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration issued operating procedures for ATRs and similar aircraft, instructing pilots not to use the autopilot in icy conditions.

However, Brazilian aviation expert Lito Sousa cautioned that meteorological conditions alone may not be enough to explain why the plane went down the way it did on Friday.

“Analyzing a plane crash solely based on images can lead to erroneous conclusions about the causes,” Sousa told the AP by phone. “But we see an aircraft with a loss of support, with no horizontal speed. In these flat, spin conditions, there is no way to regain control of the aircraft.”

The Brazilian air force said Saturday that both of the plane’s black boxes had been sent to an analytical laboratory in the capital, Brasilia. The results of the investigation are to be released within 30 days, it said.

Marcelo Moura, Voepass’s chief operating officer, told reporters Friday evening that while forecasts predicted some ice, its thickness was within acceptable limits for aircraft.

Similarly, Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Henrique Baldi of the Brazilian Air Force’s Center for Research and Prevention of Aviation Accidents told reporters at an afternoon news conference that it was too early to confirm whether ice was the cause of the crash.

The plane “is certified to fly in severe icing conditions in several countries, including countries other than ours where the impact of ice is more severe,” said Baldi, who heads the center’s investigative unit.

In an earlier statement, the center said the plane’s pilots did not call for help or say they were operating in adverse weather conditions. There is also no evidence the pilots tried to contact regional airport controllers, Ports and Airports Minister Silvio Costa Filho told reporters Friday evening in Vinhedo.

The Brazilian Federal Police said it had launched its own investigation and sent specialists in aviation disaster and disaster victim identification.

French-Italian aircraft manufacturer ATR said in a statement that it had been informed that the accident involved an ATR 72-500 model and that the company’s specialists were “fully engaged in assisting both with the investigation and in contacts with the customer.”

The ATR 72 is typically used on shorter flights. The planes are built by a joint venture between Airbus of France and Italy’s Leonardo SpA

According to the Aviation Safety Network database, 470 people have died in accidents involving various models of ATR 72 aircraft since the 1990s.

Airports Minister Costa Filho said the air force centre would also conduct a criminal investigation into the accident.

“We will conduct an investigation to ensure that this matter is fully explained to the Brazilian people,” he said.

Sá Pessoa reported from Sao Paulo and Koenig from Dallas. AP reporter Tatiana Pollastri contributed to this report.