The wreckage of the plane that crashed with 62 people in the morning, Saturday, Aug. 10, 2024, in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo state, Brazil. | Photo credit: AP
pilot of an airplane Last month, a Brazilian passenger plane crashed, killing all 62 people on board.According to a preliminary report made public on Friday (September 6, 2024), a failure in the aircraft’s snow removal system has been reported.
Investigators in Brazil were careful to avoid saying that this was the cause of the crash, stressing that more work remained to be done. Still, their report made aviation experts’ main hypothesis more credible: that the loss of lift was caused by ice buildup on the plane’s wings and the failure of its de-icing system.
Weather reports on the day of the accident predicted freezing snow in the area where the plane crashed.
Paulo Froese, an investigator at the Air Force’s Center for the Investigation and Prevention of Air Accidents, told reporters in Brasilia that audio from the cockpit voice recorder included comments by the pilots that indicated ice was building up and that the de-icing system had malfunctioned.
Just two minutes before the crash, the co-pilot said, “There’s a lot of ice.” According to his report, the plane’s data recorder also indicated that its de-icing system, responsible for preventing ice from accumulating on the wings, turned on and off several times.
“There are still many doubts. This accident should not have happened, not in the conditions in which the plane was flying and operating. It had safety equipment,” said Carlos Henrique Baldin, head of the center’s investigations division.
Operated by the airline Voepas, the plane took off from the city of Cascavel in Parana state on August 9 for Guarulhos International Airport in Sao Paulo. The plane crashed into the backyard of a house in a gated community in the city of Vinhedo, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of the Sao Paulo metropolis.
The sight of the ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop plane falling into a flat spin terrified people across Brazil.
“Based on the preliminary reports it is not possible to confirm with certainty that the cause of the accident was ice on the wings, but there are indications that ice accumulation played a significant role in the accident,” said Heinrich Hackländer, president of the National Aviators Union. The Associated Press After the press conference.
Hacklender said the ATR 72’s de-icing system is controlled manually by the pilots, and initial reports suggest it was activated during the flight, indicating an attempt to use it. However, the report does not clarify whether the system was actually deployed, he said.
The Air Force’s investigation center, known as Cenippa, is continuing to investigate the cause of the crash, but no time frame has been set for a conclusion. They are also cooperating with the ongoing investigation by the federal police to determine if anyone is responsible for the crash.
ATR is a French-Italian company. Its Model 72 is typically used on short-haul flights. The planes are built by a joint venture between Airbus in France and Leonardo SpA of Italy. According to the Aviation Safety Network’s database, there have been 470 deaths in accidents involving various models of the ATR 72 since the 1990s.
It was the deadliest plane crash since January 2023, when 72 people were killed in Nepal on a Yeti Airlines plane that stalled and crashed during landing. That plane was also an ATR 72, and the final report blamed pilot error.
On October 31, 1994, an American Eagle ATR 72-200 crashed, and the US National Transportation Safety Board determined that the probable cause was ice buildup while the aircraft was circling in a holding pattern. The aircraft rolled over at about 8,000 feet (2,500 m) and crashed into the ground, killing all 68 people on board. The US Federal Aviation Administration issued operating procedures for ATRs and similar aircraft, telling pilots not to use the autopilot in icy conditions.
Published – September 07, 2024 06:25 AM IST