RIO DE JANEIRO - A passenger plane carrying 61 people crashed Friday outside São Paulo, Brazil, killing all on board, according to Brazilian authorities.
The airline operating the flight, VoePass, said that Flight 2283 had crashed in the Brazilian city of Vinhedo, not far from its destination of São Paulo. The flight had taken off from Cascavel, Brazil, about 450 miles (724 kilometres) away, for a nearly two-hour scheduled flight that VoePass has been operating daily.
"There is still no confirmation of how the accident occurred," the airline said in a statement. The airline had earlier said 62 people had been on board.
Officials in Vinhedo said that no one survived the crash. The plane crashed in the yard of a home, but it did not hit any residences, and no one on the ground was injured, officials said.
"It hit really close to a residence, which even had people inside," Osmir Aparecido Cruz, a top Vinhedo security official, told Brazilian news outlet Globo.
Videos posted online showed a plane spiralling as it dropped from the sky. Some of the videos ended with an enormous black plume of smoke rising from the ground. Others showed what appeared to be the aftermath of the crash, with a destroyed plane and surrounding plants on fire.
Globo, Brazil's main television network, interrupted Olympics coverage to broadcast aerial images that showed firefighters spraying a smoking gash in the ground, next to the shredded remains of a plane. Two buildings, which appeared to be residences, were feet away.
According to FlightRadar24, a provider of flight data, the plane was an ATR 72, a twin-engine regional turboprop made by ATR, a joint venture of two European aerospace manufacturers, Airbus and Leonardo. VoePass used the same plane to fly from Sao Paulo to Cascavel earlier on Friday, according to FlightRadar24 data.
Smoke rises from the scene of a passenger plane crash in the Capela neighborhood of Vinhedo, Brazil, on Friday. (Photo: New York Times)
Brazilian aviation records show that the plane was manufactured in 2010 and was approved to carry up to 68 passengers.
FlightRadar24 said that in the final minute of the flight, the plane's transponder reported it was falling between 8,000 and 24,000 feet per minute. The plane had been flying at 17,000 feet just before it dropped from the sky, the company said.
FlightRadar24 also said that in the area where the plane lost control, there was an active warning for severe icing. The formation of ice on a plane during flight can be a dangerous scenario, making an aircraft heavier and reducing its lift. Most aircraft have anti-icing systems designed to prevent or reduce the formation of ice.
VoePass, formerly known as Passaredo, is a small Brazilian airline that operates a fleet of 15 ATR aircraft to serve midsize cities around Brazil. It transported roughly 500,000 passengers last year, representing just less than 0.5% of the Brazilian market.
There are more than 800 ATR aircraft flying around the world, accounting for just under 3% of the active global fleet of passenger planes, according to Cirium, an aviation data company. The aircraft are most popular in Asia and Europe, although Brazil is a leading operator of ATR planes.
ATR said in a statement that it would cooperate with investigators looking into the accident.
Official vehicles are seen at the site of a turboprop plane crash where all passengers and crew on board died, in Vinhedo, Brazil, on Friday. (Photo: Reuters)
Many residents of Vinhedo, a city of 80,000 people that is an hour's drive from São Paulo, said they heard the loud rumbling of the plane as it fell from the sky. Helen Erlemann, a 19-year-old student who lives close to the crash site, said she was in her bedroom when she heard a loud crash. "I looked out the other window," she said. "And I saw a ton of smoke rising."
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, at an event Friday, asked for a minute of silence for the victims. "We just have to mourn and care for the families, care for the people who are now going to be very nervous," he told reporters later. "Lots of sadness in the air."
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.