Written by Gabriel Araujo, Andre Romani and Luana Maria Benedetto
SAO PAULO (Reuters) – A regional turboprop plane crashed near Sao Paulo in Brazil on Friday, killing all 61 people on board, the airline said.
The plane, which was bound for Sao Paulo’s international airport, took off from Cascavel in Parana state and crashed around 1:30 p.m. (1630 GMT) in the town of Vinhedo, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Sao Paulo, regional airline Voipas said.
A video clip circulated on social media showed the ATR-72 plane spinning out of control as it fell behind a group of trees near houses, followed by a large column of black smoke.
Nearby resident Daniel de Lima said he heard a loud noise before looking outside his apartment in Vinhedo when he saw the plane flying in a horizontal spiral.
“It was spinning but not moving forward. Shortly after, it fell from the sky and exploded,” he told Reuters.
Officials in the town of Valinhos, near Vinhedo, said there were no survivors and that only one house in the local housing complex was damaged while no residents were hurt.
“I almost think the pilot was trying to avoid the densely populated neighborhood,” De Lima said.
Authorities did not immediately say what caused the crash, although Sao Paulo state official Guilherme Deret said the plane’s “black box” had been found and appeared to be intact.
The video, captured by cameras, showed clear weather, while the forecast for the area called for light rain and winds of 10 kilometers per hour (6 miles per hour).
John Hansman, a professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, reviewed some of the footage circulating on social media and said without reviewing the flight data that the crash did not appear to be caused by weather.
“It may have been a failure of one engine on one side, which the crew did not handle properly. It may have been the thrust of the remaining engine that started the plane spinning down,” he said.
US aviation safety consultant and former commercial pilot John Cox said he wanted to verify the Flightradar data, which showed a lot of speed fluctuations, but that regardless, something “really significant” happened that caused the plane to spin as it crashed.
“We don’t cause aircraft to crash, which means that the aircraft crashed at some point and then the crew lost control of it, but it appears that there was a catastrophic event that occurred before the loss of control,” Cox said.
Voipas, Brazil’s fourth-largest airline by market share, said it could not provide any further information on the cause of the crash. It had initially reported that 62 people were on board.
Franco-Italian ATR, jointly owned by Airbus and Leonardo, is the dominant producer of regional turboprop aircraft seating between 40 and 70 people.
ATR told Reuters its specialists were “fully engaged” in the investigation into the incident and its clients.
The crash is the deadliest in Brazil since 199 people were killed in 2007 on a flight operated by TAM Airlines, which later merged with LAN to become what is now LATAM Airlines (NYSE: LATAM).