New Delhi: At least 62 people were killed when a Voepass Airlines flight crashed into a residential area in Vinho on Friday night. However, Rio de Janeiro resident Adriano Assis narrowly escaped the disaster as he missed the flight due to a mix-up at the airport.
Sharing a video on X, a user wrote, “This man wasn’t allowed to board the plane that just crashed in Vinhedo in Sao Paulo, Brazil because he was LATE. He argued with the man at the boarding gate, but ended up hugging him after hearing the plane had crashed. This is unbelievable.”
Assis had a close shave as he arrived late at the airport following his shift at a local hospital. In an interview with Brazilian news outlet TV Globo, he revealed that he got to the check-in counter at 9:40 a.m. but missed the 11:40 a.m. flight from Cascavel to Guarulhos because of an airport mix-up.
When Assis learned about the crash, he thanked the airport staff and embraced the official who had prevented him from boarding the flight.
“I got here at 9:40, the gate was closed, but the flight was leaving. I was working at the Toledo Regional Hospital. When I arrived, I waited to see if they’d opened, normally there’s always someone there at the counter, but there was no one. I stayed upstairs, had my coffee and waited. The microphone didn’t say anything, the boards didn’t say anything about the flight either. When I came down it was half past ten, there was a huge queue here”, Assis elaborated.
He added,“I waited and when it got to about 10:41, the guy said I wasn’t going to get on. At that point, I argued with him and so on, and that was it. He saved my life. I hug him because he’s done his job. If he hadn’t done his job, maybe I wouldn’t be doing this interview today.”
Brazil plane crash: All 61 people aboard are confirmed dead
A passenger plane crashed into a gated residential community in Brazil’s Sao Paulo state Friday, killing all 61 people aboard and leaving a smoldering wreck, officials and the airline said. Officials did not say if anyone was killed on the ground in the neighbourhood where the plane landed in the city of Vinhedo, about 80 kilometres northwest of the metropolis of Sao Paulo. But witnesses at the scene said there were no victims among local residents.
The airline Voepass said that its plane, an ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop, was headed for Sao Paulo’s international airport Guarulhos with 57 passengers and 4 crew members aboard when it crashed in Vinhedo. It provided a flight manifest with passenger names, but not their nationalities. A prior statement had said there were 58 passengers.
“The company regrets to inform that all 61 people on board flight 2283 died at the site,” Voepass said in a statement. “At this time, Voepass is prioritising provision of unrestricted assistance to the victims’ families and effectively collaborating with authorities to determine the causes of the accident.” It was the 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.
At an event in southern Brazil, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva asked the crowd to stand and observe a minute of silence as he shared the news. Friday evening, he declared three days of mourning.
The state’s firefighters, military police and civil defence authority dispatched teams to the location. Sao Paulo’s public security secretary Guilherme Derrite spoke to reporters and confirmed that no survivors had been found. He also said the plane’s black box was recovered.
“I thought it was going to fall in our yard,” a resident and witness who gave her name only as Ana Lucia de Lima told reporters near the crash site. “It was scary, but thank God there were no victims among the locals. It seems that the 62 people inside the plane were the real victims, though.” Parana state’s Gov. Ratinho Júnior told journalists in Vinho that many of the passengers were doctors from his state attending a seminar.
“They were people who were used to saving lives, and now they lost theirs in such tragic circumstances,” Junior said, adding he had friends aboard. “It is a sad day.” Video obtained from a witness by The Associated Press and verified shows at least two bodies strewn about flaming pieces of wreckage.
Brazilian television network GloboNews showed aerial footage of an area with smoke coming out of an obliterated plane fuselage. Additional footage on GloboNews earlier showed the plane plunging in a flat spin.
A report from television network Globo’s meteorological centre said it “confirmed the possibility of the formation of ice in the region of Vinhedo,” and local media cited analysts pointing to icing as a potential cause for the crash.
But aviation expert Lito Sousa cautioned that meteorological conditions alone might not be enough to explain why the plane fell as it did.
Miraculous Escape: How a Missed Flight Saved Passenger Number 58 From Brazil Plane Crash world-news World News | Latest International News | Global World News | World News Today
