A Brazilian commercial plane went into a free fall as it lost more than 17,000 feet of altitude in one minute before striking the ground and killing all 62 people on board.
Videos of the plane spiraling to the ground before entering the nosedive and eventually catching fire after hitting the ground went viral on social media.
After seeing a plane coming downward like an unguided missile toward a residential neighborhood, locals were heard screaming in the video, although everyone on the ground remained safe in the unfortunate incident.
After taking off from Cascavel, the plane was flying towards Guarulhos when it disconnected from the control tower around 1:30 p.m. local time.
At about 1:21 p.m., the plane was traveling at 17,000 feet but immediately dropped 250 feet within 10 seconds. As the captain tried to take control, he pulled the plane back and gained 400 feet in just 8 seconds. After that, he was unable to regain control of the plane which eventually crashed in a residential area.
Authorities have recovered two black boxes, the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, as they try to make sense of the events.
People on the ground who avoided death by the barest of margins recalled the horror after the accident. According to Luiz Oliveira, who was present with his wife and the maid at his home when the plane struck his home, stated that they first thought that it was a helicopter due to the type of noise that it generated before they found a crashed plane in their garage.
Another woman, who lived just next to the crash site, stated that the whole city went into “panic” after the crash, claiming that the police have now restricted all the roads that lead to the accident site, and even residents cannot go to their homes.
Meanwhile, the chief of Brazil’s aviation accidents agency, CENIPA, noted that the plane did not communicate any type of emergency before the crash.
Previously, the airplane was “denied operation for air taxi,” but it remains unclear why it was given this status and when it was reversed.
At least ten passengers missed the flight as they were waiting for the plane at the wrong gate. One of them stated that some people even begged the airport management to let them enter the flight, but the airline denied them entry as they had already passed the boarding limit. While speaking to the media, he noted that his legs were shaking at the moment after seeing the crash as he thanked God for making them miss the unfortunate plane.
Voepass, a regional airline that owns the plane, revealed that all people on board carried Brazilian documents. However, the foreign ministry of Portugal stated that one Portuguese also died during the accident, which suggests that at least one passenger may have had dual nationality.
Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has announced three days of national mourning after the crash that was the country’s worst aviation disaster since 2007, when 199 people perished.
