San Francisco Frontiers - Workers recovering bodies from Brazil plane crash, inquiry underway

Videos showed the ATR 72-500 plane in a sickening downward spin Friday before it crashed into a residential area of the town of Vinhedo, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Sao Paulo city.

The plane, falling almost vertically, landed on its belly and exploded in flames, striking with such force that it was nearly "flattened," said Sao Paulo fire lieutenant Olivia Perroni Cazo.

The Voepass airline said there were 62 people on board, not 61 as it had reported earlier. All 62 were Brazilian.

There were no casualties on the ground.

The fiery crash transformed the plane's fuselage into a mass of twisted metal, and a steady overnight rain complicated the recovery efforts by some 200 workers.

By early afternoon Saturday, the bodies of roughly half the victims had been removed, Vinhedo Mayor Dario Pacheco told reporters.

With many victims badly burned, only "two bodies have been identified: the pilot and the co-pilot," Pacheco said.

"We estimate that all bodies will have been recovered by day's end," said Carlos Palhares, who heads the federal police's criminology institute.

The dead are being transported to Sao Paulo's main morgue.

The twin-engine turboprop, built by aviation firm ATR, was flying from Cascavel in southern Parana state to Sao Paulo's Guarulhos international airport.

According to the Flight Radar 24 website, the plane flew for about an hour at 17,000 feet (5,180 meters), until 1:21 pm (1621 GMT) when it began losing altitude at a catastrophic rate.

Radar contact was lost at 1:22 pm, the Brazilian air force reported. It said the plane's crew "at no time declared an emergency or were under adverse weather conditions."

Brazil's Aeronautical Accidents Investigation and Prevention Center (CENIPA) has opened an inquiry into the cause of the crash.

Its experts in Brasilia are already analyzing data from the plane's in-flight recorder, said the center's chief, Brigadier Marcelo Moreno.

- 'No technical problems' -

ATR, a joint subsidiary of European giant Airbus and Italy's Leonardo, said its experts will assist in the investigation.

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's 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.

Moura said the plane was a type that flies at an altitude "where there is a greater sensitivity to icing," but that conditions Friday were "within acceptable parameters for a flight."

- 'Horrible, horrible' -

"It was horrible, horrible... such a sad tragedy," said a trembling Lourdes da Silva Astolfo, 67, whose home is only yards (meters) from the crash site.

She told AFP she had first felt a "rumbling, almost like a tremor," when she suddenly saw the plane almost directly overhead. Seconds later came the stunning impact and the horrified screams from neighbors as a thick cloud of acrid smoke billowed outward.

The normally peaceful, wooded enclave where the plane came down saw a steady stream Saturday of police cars, ambulances and firetrucks.

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.

M.Powell--SFF