Brazil authorities recover bodies of all 62 plane crash victims

VINHEDO, Brazil -  Brazilian emergency crews on Aug 10 recovered the remains of the 62 victims aboard a

plane that crashed a day earlier near Sao Paulo

, killing all on board.

The bodies of most of the victims - 34 males and 28 females - had already been moved to Sao Paulo’s police morgue for identification. The bodies of the pilot and co-pilot were identified earlier in the day, said Dario Pacheco, mayor of Vinhedo.

Four people with dual citizenship were among the victims, three Venezuelans and one Portuguese woman, said regional carrier Voepass, which operated the aircraft.

The Venezuelans were a four-year-old boy, his mother and grandmother, local outlet Globo News reported. The boy’s dog was also on the flight, which the family was taking to later head to Colombia, according to the outlet.

On Aug 9, regional carrier Voepass said the plane was carrying 57 passengers and four crew. However, the firm confirmed on Aug 10 that another unaccounted for passenger was on the flight, putting the number of casualties at 62.

Authorities are using seat assignments, physical characteristics, documents and belongings such as cell phones to identify the victims, firefighter Maycon Cristo said at the crash site, as the bodies were being pulled from the wreckage.

"Once all this evidence has been collected, we will remove the victims from the wreckage and place them in the vehicle to be transported to São Paulo," he said.

Relatives of the victims have been brought to Sao Paulo to help provide genetic material for DNA identification of body parts and other information on the dead, said Sao Paulo state government Civil Defence Coordinator Henguel Pereira.

The plane’s so-called “black box” containing voice recordings and flight data was undergoing analysis, said Marcelo Moreno, the head of Brazilian aviation accident investigation centre Cenipa, at a press conference in Vinhedo.

The plane, an ATR-72 turboprop, was bound for Sao Paulo from Cascavel, in the state of Parana, and crashed around 1:30pm local time in Vinhedo, some 80km north-west of Sao Paulo. Despite coming down in a residential area, no one on the ground was hurt.

The aircraft was flying normally until 1:21pm, when it stopped responding to calls, and radar contact was lost at 1:22pm, Brazil’s air force said in a statement.

Pilots did not report an emergency or adverse weather conditions, the air force added.

Franco-Italian ATR, jointly owned by Airbus and Leonardo, is the dominant producer of regional turboprop planes seating 40 to 70 people. ATR told Reuters on Aug 9 that its specialists were “fully engaged” with the investigation into the crash.

The plane, in use since 2010, was in compliance with current standards, the National Civil Aviation Agency said, adding that the four crew members were all fully certified.

Voepass’ operations director, Marcel Moura, said the plane had undergone routine maintenance the night before the accident and that “no technical problems” were found.

But experts suggested icing of the plane’s wings may have been behind the accident.

Mr Moura said the plane was a type that flies at an altitude “where there is a greater sensitivity to icing,” but that conditions on Aug 9 were “within acceptable parameters for a flight”.

The normally peaceful, wooded enclave where the plane came down saw a steady stream of police cars, ambulances and firetrucks on Aug 10, with a steady overnight rain complicating the recovery efforts by some 200 workers.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has declared three days of national mourning for what was one of the worst aviation accidents in the country’s history.

In 2007, an Airbus A320 of Brazil’s TAM airlines overran a runway at Sao Paulo’s Congonhas airport and crashed into a warehouse, killing all 187 on board and 12 runway workers.

Two years later, an Air France A330 on a Rio de Janeiro-to-Paris flight crashed into the Atlantic. All 228 people on board died. REUTERS, AFP