Families prepare to ID victims of Brazilian plane crash

Forensics experts are working to identify the remains of the 62 people killed in an airliner crash in Brazil as the victims' families gather at a morgue and hotels in Sao Paulo. Local authorities said the bodies of the pilot, Danilo Santos Romano, and his co-pilot, Humberto de Campos Alencar e Silva, were the first to be identified by forensics experts. Sao Paulo state government said in a statement on Saturday evening the remains of all the victims - 34 males and 28 females - had been recovered. The ATR-72 twin-engine turboprop operated by Brazilian airline Voepass was headed for Guarulhos international airport in Sao Paulo with 58 passengers and four crew members when it went down on Friday in Vinhedo, 78km north of the city. Voepass said three passengers with Brazilian identification also carried Venezuelan documents and one had Portuguese papers. At least eight doctors were aboard, Parana Governor Ratinho Junior said. Four professors at Parana's Unioeste university were also confirmed dead. Three-year-old Liz Ibba dos Santos, who was travelling with her father, was the only child known to be on the passenger list. The remains of Luna, a dog travelling with a Venezuelan family, were found in the wreckage. Sao Paulo's morgue, which began receiving the bodies on Friday night, asked victims' relatives to bring medical, X-ray and dental records to help identify the bodies. Blood tests were also done to help identification efforts. Police restricted access to the main entrance of the Sao Paulo morgue where bodies from the crash were being identified. 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. It was the world's deadliest airline crash since January 2023, when 72 people died on a Yeti Airlines plane - also an ATR-72 - in Nepal that stalled and crashed while making its landing approach. The final report blamed pilot error. Brazilian meteorological company Metsul said on Friday there were reports of severe icing in Sao Paulo state about the time of the crash. Brazilian aviation expert Lito Sousa cautioned that meteorological conditions alone might not be enough to explain why the Voepass plane fell in the manner it did. "Analysing an air crash just with images can lead to wrong conclusions about the causes but we can see a plane with loss of support, no horizontal speed," Sousa said. "In this flat spin condition, there's no way to reclaim control of the plane." Brazil's air force said on Saturday the plane's two flight recorders had been sent to its analysis laboratory in Brasilia, with investigation results expected to be published within 30 days. Voepass director of operations Marcelo Moura told reporters on Friday while there were forecasts for ice, they were within acceptable levels for the aircraft. The Brazilian air force's centre for the investigation and prevention of air accidents has said the plane's pilots did not call for help or say they were operating under adverse weather conditions. Built by a joint venture between France's Airbus and Italy's Leonardo SpA, the ATR-72 is generally used on shorter flights. Crashes involving various models of the ATR-72 have resulted in 470 deaths since the 1990s, according to a database of the Aviation Safety Network.