Commercial aviation is incredibly safe, so it’s shocking when we see any sort of fatal accident. However, this has to be one of the most disturbing accidents we’ve ever seen.
Turboprop spirals out of control in Brazil
A turboprop had a fatal crash today (Friday, August 9, 2024) while operating a domestic flight in Brazil, killing all 62 people onboard (four crew members and 58 passengers). Specifically, this involves an ATR-72 belonging to Brazilian airline Voepass, operating flight 2Z 2283, scheduled to fly the 456-mile route from Cascavel (CAC) to Sao Paulo (GRU). The aircraft operating the flight was a 14-year-old aircraft with the registration code PS-VPB.
Shortly after 1:20PM local time today, the plane was at its cruising altitude of 17,000 feet and was around 50 miles from Sao Paulo, when the crew suddenly lost control, and the aircraft entered a corkscrew-style spiral. The last data from the transponder shows that the aircraft had a vertical speed between -8,000 and -24,000 feet per minute.
There’s video footage of this incident from all kinds of angles, and it’s absolutely awful to watch. I can’t even imagine how terrible the last seconds were for those onboard. The below is just about the least disturbing version I’ve seen, though there are all kinds of videos out there, including of the crash site, which I won’t be sharing here.
It’s of course too early to know what went wrong here, though, as we’ll have to wait for investigators to release an initial report. However, today there were reports of severe icing in the area where the aircraft crashed, at an altitude between 12,000 and 21,000 feet, which is the range in which the aircraft was flying.
What an absolutely awful accident
First and foremost, my thoughts are with the families of those onboard, and may those onboard rest in peace. Any sort of aircraft accident is terrible, but this one is especially hard to process.
For one, the clear footage of this accident from so many angles is just terrible to watch, as it’s not often you see a plane so clearly fall out of the sky in this way.
Beyond that, a vast majority of the time, accidents happen either during takeoff or landing. To see a plane just fall out of the sky at cruising altitude is exceedingly rare. I’m very curious to see what a report reveals about the cause of this incident, because stuff like this just shouldn’t happen.
Bottom line
A Voepass ATR-72 had a tragic accident today in Brazil, killing all 62 people onboard. The aircraft was cruising at 17,000 feet when it suddenly entered a sharp dive, before crashing into the ground. There were reports of severe icing in the area, though we don’t know much beyond that.
My thoughts are with the families of the deceased. Simply terrible…
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