Plane carrying 61 people crashes in Brazil with no survivors, official says

BRASÍLIA - A domestic flight in Brazil carrying 61 people crashed near São Paulo on Friday, killing everyone onboard, Brazilian officials said.

Tarcísio Gomes de Freitas, the governor of São Paulo state, said he had been informed that there were no survivors in the crash. He added that he was planning to go to Vinhedo, the city where the plane crashed.

The Brazilian airline Voepass said in a revised statement on its website that there was no information immediately available about how the crash happened or the condition of the 57 passengers and four crew members aboard Flight 2283 from Cascavel to São Paulo. In an earlier statement Friday, the airline said the flight was carrying 58 passengers, though that initial statement was later deleted and replaced.

At a public appearance Friday, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called for a moment of silence, saying he was the bearer of “some very bad news” before sharing the news of the crash. Later, Lula declared three days of mourning in honor of the people who died in the crash.

Video of the crash site in Vinhedo showed smoke billowing. Aerial footage broadcast by Brazil’s GloboNews showed the wreckage - scorched pieces of the plane - in a residential area.

According to the flight-tracking site Flightradar24, the plane took off shortly before noon local time, reaching an altitude of about 17,000 feet. At about 1:20 p.m. local time, it started to drop sharply, falling to an altitude of 4,100 feet in the span of two minutes, according to Flightradar24.

Brazilian authorities said the aircraft stopped responding to calls from São Paulo traffic control at 1:21 p.m. Air traffic control did not receive a distress signal or reports of adverse weather from the aircraft. The aircraft fell off the radar at 1:22 p.m.

During a news conference in Brasília Friday afternoon, Brazilian authorities said they found the aircraft’s black box, cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder. The devices will be analyzed in a lab in Brasilia.

Voepass, formerly Passaredo Airlines, is a small airline that mostly caters to rural south and southwest Brazil.

Friday’s crash is Brazil’s deadliest plane crash involving commercial aviation since 2007, when a TAM Airbus-A320 crashed into a building near Congonhas Airport in São Paulo, killing 199 people.

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Pietsch reported from Washington. Jon Gerberg contributed to this report.