Brazil: 61 passengers onboard die in plane crash

All 61 passengers on board a tragically perished in a plane crash in Sao Paulo on Friday afternoon, CNN said, citing an airline Voepass statement.

“The company regrets to inform that all 61 people on board flight 2283 died at the scene,” Voepass said in a statement, revising the death toll down from an initial assessment of 62 dead. There were 57 passengers and four crew members on board, the company said.

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Dramatic footage of plane crash circulating on the internet

The dramatic footage of the plane accident, which shows how its destroyed fuselage caught fire, has been making the rounds on the internet.

All of the passengers had Brazilian papers, according to airline staff, however it’s unclear if any of them were dual citizens.

According to flight tracking data, the twin-engine turboprop ATR 72-500 dropped 17,000 feet in less than a minute. Although the cause of this is yet unknown, CNN stated.

The plane was travelling from Cascavel to Guarulhos

The aircraft was traveling from Cascavel, in the Brazilian state of Parana, to Guarulhos, in the state of Sao Paulo.

According to Flightradar24 data, it lost signal soon after taking off from Cascavel, just before 1:30 p.m. local time (12:30 p.m. ET).

In addition, the plane started to lose altitude around a minute before it crashed.

According to the CNN story, the plane was at 17,000 feet until 1:21 p.m. local time, at which point it plunged about 250 feet in ten seconds.

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Then, in roughly eight seconds, the airplane saw a climb of nearly 400 feet. It lost little less than two thousand feet in eight seconds. The flight then started to swiftly descend after about a minute, losing about 17,000 feet in that time, the report continued.

The final data transmission from the airliner occurred at 1:22 p.m. local time.