Details have been shared about some of the 62 victims of a tragic plane crash in Brazil on Friday.
On Friday afternoon, a passenger plane crashed in a residential part of Sao Paulo state in Brazil after being filmed spiraling out of control in the air.
Voepass, the airline operating the flight, confirmed that the twin-engine turboprop plane was en route to Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos International Airport with 58 passengers and four crew members on board when it crashed in the city of Vinhedo.
Tragically, all 62 people on board the flight were killed in the crash.
Many of the victims on board the fateful flight have now been named, including the ‘experienced’ pilot who was in charge of the aircraft.
Captain Danilo Santos Romano, 35, was the first victim identified in the wake of the disaster.
He had been working as a pilot for over 10 years and had been with the Voepass airline since 2022 according to his LinkedIn page, and had logged over 4,500 flight hours.
A colleague who’d endorsed him had said Romano was “always smiling” and “willing to help”.
Romano also appeared to enjoy sports in his downtime, with photos from Facebook showing him running a recent 15K race and celebrating the Palmeiras football club.
Officials confirmed that Romano was in the cockpit of the twin-engine ATR 72-500 plane that went down in a residential neighborhood.
Co-pilot Humberto de Campos Alencar e Silva, 61, was also named, as well as flight attendants Débora Soper Avila, 29, and Rubia Silva de Lima, 41, according to the flight manifest, as reported by Globo TV News.
Other victims included an elderly couple – José Cloves Arruda, 76, and his wife Maria Auxiliadora vaz de Arruda, 74, while the youngest known passenger to die on board was three-year-old Liz Ibba dos Santos, who was traveling with her father, 41-year-old Rafael Fernando dos Santos, where they had planned to spend Brazilian Father’s Day together in Santa Caterina, according to Globo TV News.
The flight also contained several doctors who were heading to a seminar, including Arianne Albuquerque Estavan Risso and Mariana Comiran Belim, who were both clinical oncology residents from the Cascavel Cancer Hospital (Uopeccan).
The hospital paid tribute to the young doctors, saying in a statement that they “treated all patients with great dedication, affection, and respect.”
The statement added: “It is no wonder that the two were frequently praised by our ombudsman offices. The love that they both had for their profession was very clear.
“Now, all that is left for us is the longing and memories of two young doctors who left us too soon.”
After it was confirmed that there were no survivors, the death toll had initially been named as 61 people, however, Voepass later confirmed that it was in fact 62 fatalities as a 58th passenger, Constantino Thé Maia, was not on the manifest due to a “technical issue,” according to Globo TV News.
Almost 30 of the bodies had been recovered from the crash site by midday on Saturday and all of them were expected to be removed by the end of the day, according to officials.
Their remains were taken to Legal Medical Institute for formal identification.
The cause of the crash remains unknown after the aircraft took off from Cascavel at 11.56AM local time on Friday, headed for Sao Paulo.
The plane had flown for around an hour and a half without incident, according to officials, and the crew did not call for help or report any adverse weather conditions ahead of the deadly crash.
There is also no evidence that the crew had tried to contact any air traffic controllers at nearby airports to report that they may need to make an emergency landing, according to Ports and Airports Minister Silvio Costa Filho.
Voepass’s CEO, Eduardo Busch, said at a press conference as reported by CNN: “The entire crew was competent.
“We are waiting for access to all communications between the pilot and the control tower to have a broader understanding of what happened.”
São Paulo Public Security Secretary Guilherme Derrite confirmed that the plane’s black box, which contains flight data and voice recordings, had been recovered from the crash site and will be analyzed to see if it holds any further information on what caused the plane to plummet over 13,000 in one minute.
The final moments of the plane were caught on camera by horrified onlookers as it fell from the sky before eventually going out of the camera’s view behind a line of trees.
Other eyewitnesses had captured footage of the smoldering wreckage after it landed terrifyingly close to a home, though nobody on the ground was injured as a result of the crash.
Some experts have questioned whether icing was the cause of the crash as Marcelo Moura, the director of operations for Voepass, told reporters that there had been ice in the forecast for Friday, but it was within acceptable levels for the aircraft.
According to Lt. Col. Carlos Henrique Baldi of the Brazilian air force’s center for the investigation and prevention of air accidents, the plane was “certified in several countries to fly in severe icing conditions, including in countries unlike ours, where the impact of ice is more significant.”
Our thoughts remain with everyone affected by this tragedy.