What caused the fatal plane crash in Brazil?

On Friday, a small aircraft crashed into the Brazilian town of Vinhedo, about 50 kilometres northwest of its destination in São Paulo, killing everyone on board.

1. The crash

The plane, an ATR-72 registered PS-VPB, flown by the Voepass airline, had departed from Cascavel, in the state of Paraná. According to preliminary reviews from Brazil’s air force, the flight operated normally until 1:21 pm local time and radar contact was lost one minute later. Then the plane stalled and started spiralling to the ground, crashing around 1:30 pm local time (5:30 pm Brussels time).

“The company regrets to inform that all 61 people on board flight 2283 died at the site”, Voepass said in a statement. “At this time, Voepass is prioritizing provision of unrestricted assistance to the victims’ families and effectively collaborating with authorities to determine the causes of the accident.”

The ATR-72 is a small propeller plane, built in France by a joint venture between Airbus and Italian aerospace company Leonardo. It is the same type of plane that was used by Yeti Airlines in January 2023 on the world’s last serious aviation incident that killed 72 people in Nepal. That accident was ultimately attributed to pilot error.

2. Possible causes

An official report determining the cause of the crash will take at least one month to conclude, but aviation experts have started proposing possible issues. While some have suggested different options, Thomas Anthony, director of the aviation safety program at the University of Southern California, highlighted that “the main thing we know is that it’s never one thing”. As aviation incidents are quite rare, but when they do happen, their mortality is high, planes are built with multiple fail-safe mechanisms to prevent crashes as much as possible.

Some have proposed ice buildup as the cause, since the ATR-72 has had issues with that in the past. After a deadly crash in Indiana in 1994, caused by ice buildup, ATR improved its planes’ de-icing systems, but issues were again reported in Norway in 2016, however, that time, the pilot was able to regain control of the aircraft. Weather reports show ice was predicted at the altitude the aircraft was flying at.

“The way the aircraft fell, spinning out of control, is characteristic of someone who lost the functionality of the wing and the aircraft controls”, said Celso Faria de Souza, a Brazilian aeronautical engineer and forensic expert in plane crashes. “This can happen because of ice.”

However, John Cox, an airline pilot for 25 years who now aids plane crash investigations, also strengthened the point that a single factor is improbable. First, he pointed out that ice buildup should not cause the plane to stall at the speed it was flying at. “If there is enough ice, then it changes the shape of the wing, and that could cause it to stall at a much higher speed”, he explained.

But in that case, a detection system should have alerted the pilots. If the detection system malfunctioned, then the pilots should have been able to actually see the ice forming on the wings, and windshield wipers and activate the de-icing system. If that system also failed, the pilots should have been able to bring the aircraft to a lower altitude where the ice would have simply melted. “We’re talking about Brazil here, not Antarctica”, Cox added.

“The only thing that you can tell from the videos is that the aircraft was not able to generate sufficient lift to sustain flight and stalled”, an aerospace engineer told Travel Tomorrow. “Ice is a probable cause, but it’s very complicated to verify since ice can be transparent and it melts”, he added.

While speculations keep going around, crash investigators in Brazil have recovered the two black boxes aboard the plane – one containing flight data and another the voice recordings from within the cockpit. Black box data is what usually sheds light on aviation accidents, many times being able to register information until the very moment of impact.