Brazil Investigating Cause of Fiery Plane Crash That Killed 61

Aerial view of the wreckage of an airplane that crashed with 61 people on board in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo State, Brazil, on August 9, 2024. (AFP)
Aerial view of the wreckage of an airplane that crashed with 61 people on board in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo State, Brazil, on August 9, 2024. (AFP)
TT
20

Brazil Investigating Cause of Fiery Plane Crash That Killed 61

Aerial view of the wreckage of an airplane that crashed with 61 people on board in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo State, Brazil, on August 9, 2024. (AFP)
Aerial view of the wreckage of an airplane that crashed with 61 people on board in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo State, Brazil, on August 9, 2024. (AFP)

Brazilian authorities worked Saturday to piece together what exactly caused the plane crash in Sao Paulo state the prior day that killed all 61 people on board.

Local airline Voepass' plane, an ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop, was headed for Sao Paulo’s international airport in Guarulhos with 57 passengers and 4 crew members when it went down in the city of Vinhedo.

Images recorded by witnesses showed the aircraft in a flat spin and plunging vertically before smashing to the ground inside a gated community, and leaving an obliterated fuselage consumed by fire. Residents said there were no injuries on the ground.

Rain drizzled down on rescue workers as they recovered the first bodies from the scene in the chill of the Southern Hemisphere’s winter. Some residents of the condominium silently left to spend the night elsewhere.

It was the world's deadliest airline crash since January 2023, when 72 people died on board a Yeti Airlines plane in Nepal that stalled and crashed while making its landing approach. That plane also was an ATR 72, and the final report blamed pilot error.

A report Friday from Brazilian television network Globo’s meteorological center said it "confirmed the possibility of the formation of ice in the region of Vinhedo," and local media cited experts pointing to icing as a potential cause for the crash.

An American Eagle ATR 72-200 crashed on Oct. 31, 1994, and the United States National Transportation Safety Board determined that the probable cause was ice buildup while the plane was circling in a holding pattern. The plane rolled at about 8,000 feet and dove into the ground, killing all 68 people on board. The US Federal Aviation Administration issued operating procedures for ATRs and similar planes, telling pilots not to use the autopilot in icing conditions.

But Brazilian aviation expert Lito Sousa cautioned that meteorological conditions alone might not be enough to explain why the plane fell in the manner that it did on Friday.

"Analyzing an air crash just with images can lead to wrong conclusions about the causes," Sousa told the AP by phone. "But we can see a plane with loss of support, no horizontal speed. In this flat spin condition, there’s no way to reclaim control of the plane."

Speaking to reporters Friday in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo Public Security Secretary Guilherme Derrite said the plane’s black box had been recovered, apparently in a preserved state.

Marcelo Moura, director of operations for Voepass, told reporters Friday night that, while there were forecasts for ice, they were within acceptable levels for the aircraft.

Likewise, Lt. Col. Carlos Henrique Baldi of the Brazilian air force’s center for the investigation and prevention of air accidents, told reporters in a late afternoon press conference that it was still too early to confirm whether ice caused the crash.

The plane is "certified in several countries to fly in severe icing conditions, including in countries unlike ours, where the impact of ice is more significant," said Baldi, who heads the center’s investigation division.

In an earlier statement, the center said that the plane’s pilots did not call for help nor say they were operating under adverse weather conditions. There has been no evidence that the pilots tried to contact controllers of regional airports, either, Ports and Airports Minister Silvio Costa Filho told reporters Friday night in Vinhedo.

Brazil’s Federal Police began its own investigation, and dispatched specialists in plane crashes and the identification of disaster victims, it said in a statement.

French-Italian plane manufacturer ATR said in a statement that it had been informed that the accident involved its ATR 72-500 model, and that company specialists are "fully engaged to support both the investigation and the customer."

The ATR 72 generally is used on shorter flights. The planes are built by a joint venture of Airbus in France and Italy’s Leonardo S.p.A.

Crashes involving various models of the ATR 72 have resulted in 470 deaths going back to the 1990s, according to a database of the Aviation Safety Network.

Brazilian authorities began transferring the corpses to the morgue Friday, and called on victims’ family members to bring any medical, X-ray and dental exams to help identify the bodies. Blood tests were also done to help identification efforts.

Costa Filho, the airports minister, said the air force's center will also conduct a criminal probe of the accident.

"We will investigate so this case is fully explained to the Brazilian people," he said.



US Freezes almost all Aid Except for Israel, Egypt Arms

Sandra Ramos plays with her daughter at an improvised shack built with the help of the US Agency for the International Development (USAID) following hurricanes in in La Lima, Honduras, in July 2022. Orlando SIERRA / AFP/File
Sandra Ramos plays with her daughter at an improvised shack built with the help of the US Agency for the International Development (USAID) following hurricanes in in La Lima, Honduras, in July 2022. Orlando SIERRA / AFP/File
TT
20

US Freezes almost all Aid Except for Israel, Egypt Arms

Sandra Ramos plays with her daughter at an improvised shack built with the help of the US Agency for the International Development (USAID) following hurricanes in in La Lima, Honduras, in July 2022. Orlando SIERRA / AFP/File
Sandra Ramos plays with her daughter at an improvised shack built with the help of the US Agency for the International Development (USAID) following hurricanes in in La Lima, Honduras, in July 2022. Orlando SIERRA / AFP/File

The United States, the world's biggest donor, froze virtually all foreign aid on Friday, making exceptions only for emergency food, and military funding for Israel and Egypt.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent an internal memo days after President Donald Trump took office vowing an "America First" policy of tightly restricting assistance overseas.

"No new funds shall be obligated for new awards or extensions of existing awards until each proposed new award or extension has been reviewed and approved," said the memo to staff seen by AFP.

The sweeping order appears to affect everything from development assistance to military aid -- including to Ukraine, which received billions of dollars in weapons under Trump's predecessor Joe Biden as it tries to repel a Russian invasion.

The directive also means a pause of at least several months of US funding for PEPFAR, the anti-HIV/AIDS initiative that buys anti-retroviral drugs to treat the disease in developing countries, largely in Africa.

Launched under president George W. Bush in 2003, PEPFAR is credited with saving some 26 million lives and until recently enjoyed broad popular support along partisan lines in Washington.

But the memo explicitly made exceptions for military assistance to Israel -- whose longstanding major arms packages from the United States have expanded further since the Gaza war -- and Egypt, which has received generous US defense funding since it signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.

Rubio also made an exception for US contributions to emergency food assistance, which the United States has been contributing following crises around the world including in Sudan and Syria.

Lawmakers from the rival Democratic Party said that more than 20 million people relied on medication through PEPFAR and 63 million people on US-funded anti-malaria efforts including nets.

"For years, Republicans in Congress have decried what they see as a lack of US credibility vis-a-vis countries like China, Russia, and Iran," said Representative Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Relations Committee, and Representative Lois Frankel.

"Now our credibility is on the line, and it appears we will cut and run from American commitments to our partners around the world," they wrote in a letter.

Washington has long leveraged aid as a tool of its foreign policy, saying it cares about development and drawing a contrast with China, which is primarily concerned about seeking natural resources.

Meeks and Frankel also noted that foreign assistance is appropriated by Congress and said they would seek its implementation.

'Life or death consequences'
The memo allows the State Department to make other case-by-case exceptions and temporarily to fund salaries to staff and other administrative expenses.

The memo called for an internal review of all foreign assistance within 85 days.

In justifying the freeze, Rubio -- who as a senator was a supporter of development assistance -- wrote that it was impossible for the new administration to assess whether existing foreign aid commitments "are not duplicated, are effective and are consistent with President Trump's foreign policy."

The United States has long been the world's top donor in dollar terms, although a number of European nations, especially in Scandinavia, give significantly more as a percent of their economies.

The United States gave more than $64 billion in overseas development assistance in 2023, the last year for which records were available, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which advises industrialized countries.

Trump had already on taking office Monday signed an executive order suspending foreign assistance for 90 days, but it was not immediately clear how it would be implemented.

Anti-poverty group Oxfam said that Trump was abandoning a longstanding consensus in the United States for foreign assistance.

"Humanitarian and development assistance accounts for only around one percent of the federal budget; it saves lives, fights diseases, educates millions of children and reduces poverty," Oxfam America president Abby Maxman said in a statement.

"Suspending and ultimately cutting many of these programs could have life or death consequences for countless children and families who are living through crisis," she said.