SAO PAULO — Families of victims of a Brazilian plane crash gathered Sunday at a Sao Paulo morgue and hotel while forensic experts worked to identify the remains of the 62 people killed in the disaster.
Local authorities said the bodies of pilot Danilo Santos Romano and co-pilot Humberto de Campos Alencar e Silva were the first to be identified. Brazilian media reported that four more had been identified at a morgue in Sao Paulo, but authorities have not confirmed that information.
The search ended at 10:45pm on Saturday, 33 hours after the crash, and the bodies of all 34 men and 28 women killed had been recovered, the Sao Paulo state government said in a statement on Sunday morning. It added that wreckage remained at the scene and investigators were continuing to work.
The ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop plane, operated by Brazilian airline Vorpus, was heading to Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos International Airport with 58 passengers and four crew members on board when it crashed on Friday in Vinhedo, 49 miles north of the capital. Vorpus said three passengers who held Brazilian identity cards also had Venezuelan documents and one also had Portuguese documents.
At least eight doctors were on board, said Paraná state Governor Ratinho Junior, and four professors from Unioeste University in the western state of Paraná were also confirmed dead.
Three-year-old Liz Iba dos Santos, who was traveling with her father, was the only child listed on the passenger manifest. The remains of Luna, a dog traveling with a Venezuelan family, were also found in the wreckage.
The Sao Paulo morgue began accepting bodies on Friday evening and asked relatives of victims to bring along medical records, X-rays and dental records to help identify the bodies. Blood tests were also conducted to aid the identification effort.
Several family members took to social media to speak out about the tragedy.
Tania Azevedo, whose son Tiago was killed in the crash, was staying in a hotel in Sao Paulo but posted that she was waiting to go to the morgue.
“I believe that somewhere, Tiago is trying to help other injured people who also need light and love,” she said. “I couldn’t go there (the morgue). I’m waiting here. It’s dark here and I need light and love myself.”
Images taken by witnesses showed the plane spinning horizontally, then plummeting before hitting the ground inside a gated community, leaving a mangled, burning fuselage behind. Residents said no one on the ground was injured.
It was the world’s deadliest aircraft accident since a Yeti Airlines plane stalled on approach and crashed in Nepal in January 2023, killing 72 people. That plane was also an ATR72, and the final report blamed pilot error.
Metzl, one of Brazil’s most trusted weather companies, said on Friday that there were reports of heavy icing in the state of Sao Paulo at the time of the crash. Local media cited experts who suggested icing could be a cause of the accident.
A video shared on social media channels on Saturday showed a Vaupass pilot telling passengers on a flight from Guarulhos to the city of Cascavel that the ATR72 had been flying safely around the world for decades. The pilot also asked passengers to respect the memory of his colleague and the company and to say a prayer.
“This tragedy doesn’t just hit those who died in the accident, it hits all of us,” the unidentified pilot said. “We are doing everything in our power to fulfill our mission of taking you to your destination safely and comfortably.”
Police barred access to the main entrance of the Sao Paulo morgue, where the bodies were being identified. Some of the victims’ families arrived on foot, others by minivan. None spoke to reporters, and authorities asked them not to film their arrival.
A flight carrying more family members from Paraná state arrived at Guarulhos airport on Saturday afternoon, with airline-sponsored minivans provided to transport them to the morgue.
The Sao Paulo state government said 26 families had already visited the morgue to identify the bodies, and it expected more on Sunday.
On October 31, 1994, an American Eagle ATR 72-200 crashed in what the National Transportation Safety Board determined was caused by ice accumulation while the aircraft was turning in a holding pattern. The aircraft rolled over at an altitude of approximately 8,000 feet and struck the ground, killing all 68 people on board. The Federal Aviation Administration issued operating procedures for the ATR and similar aircraft instructing pilots not to use the autopilot in icing conditions.
Brazilian aviation expert Lito Sousa warned that weather conditions alone may not explain why the Vorpus plane crashed in the way it did on Friday.
“When you analyze an aircraft accident based solely on images, you can come to the wrong conclusions about the cause,” Souza told The Associated Press by phone. “But you see the plane losing support and horizontal speed. In this flat spin, there is no way to regain control of the plane.”
Brazil’s air force said on Saturday it had sent the plane’s two flight recorders to an analytical laboratory in the capital, Brasilia, and that the results of an investigation would be made public within 30 days.
Vorpass operations director Marcelo Moura told reporters on Friday night that although ice had been forecast, it was within acceptable limits for aircraft to operate.
The Brazilian Air Force’s Air Accident Investigation and Prevention Center said in an earlier statement that the plane’s pilot had not called for help or said he was flying in bad weather.
The ATR72 is built by a joint venture between France’s Airbus and Italy’s Leonardo and is typically used for short-haul flights. Since the 1990s, 470 people have been killed in crashes involving various models of the ATR72, according to the Aviation Safety Network database.
