São Paulo, Brazil – Brazil’s Forensic Institute (IML) on Thursday announced that it had identified all 62 victims of a Voepass Airlines flight that crashed in the city of Vinhedo last Friday. Authorities are investigating the cause of the crash.
According to the announcement, about 40 professionals, including doctors and teams of forensic dentistry, anthropology and radiology, worked to identify the victims. The teams used medical records in addition to collecting biological material from the families for DNA testing.
Medical examiners were able to identify most of the bodies through fingerprints, but some victims’ dental records, which were provided by the families, had to be analyzed. It was not necessary to perform DNA tests for biological confirmation.
“All the identification was made possible by analyzing the fingerprints compared to the personal documents provided by the families and dental arches,” said the supervisor of the Technical-Scientific Police of São Paulo, Claudinei Salomão.
According to Salomão, the position in which many bodies were found – hugging their legs, with their heads down – indicates that the passengers may have been warned from the cabin of an impending crash. The so-called “brace” position is when passengers put their heads between their knees and hug their legs during an emergency landing.
He also said it was “very likely” that the victims had not suffered at all. The IML concluded that all died of multiple trauma immediately when the plane hit the ground.
“A fall of four thousand meters in less than two minutes causes the human body to undergo movements so severe that it leads to fainting. All died during the crash, due to the countless traumas suffered, but the trend is that all are already dead.”
With the identification of the bodies, families are now holding funerals and burying their loved ones in different states of the country. This Thursday, the mass of the seventh day was held in the hotel in Sao Paulo where the families have gathered since the accident, with the presence of about 60 relatives and authorities.
Read more: The families of the victims killed in the plane crash in Brazil demand an investigation
Now the focus is on clarifying the cause of the accident. The Brazilian Air Force’s (FAB) investigation center managed to fully recover data from the plane’s two black boxes and aims to submit a preliminary report within 30 days, as air accident investigations in Brazil can take up to two years.
In this preliminary report, the FAB is expected to present the main hypotheses of the accident based on data extracted from the black boxes, which include information about the flight and recordings of conversations between the pilot and co-pilot.
Aviation experts have raised the possibility that the plane’s wings may have become covered with ice during the flight, causing instability and the crash. The plane had departed from Cascavel, in the south of the country, for São Paulo and crashed in Vinhedo, about 70 km from the airport, when it was already in the descent procedure.
In addition to the FAB investigation, which is more focused on technical issues, the Federal Police is also investigating possible criminal liability – whether there was any omission or negligence on the part of the airline. The police have already summoned the directors of Voepass to give statements. The Public Prosecutor’s Office is closely monitoring the work.
This was the worst plane crash in Brazil in 17 years. The latest was on July 17, 2007, when a Latam Airlines plane coming from Porto Alegre, in southern Brazil, overran the runway while landing at Congonhas Airport in São Paulo and crashed into a Latam warehouse. All 187 people on board and 12 on the ground were killed.
