Families of victims of a plane crash in Brazil gathered at a morgue and hotels in Sao Paulo on Sunday as forensic experts work to identify the remains of the 62 people who died in the accident.
Local authorities said the bodies of pilot Danilo Santos Romano and his co-pilot Humberto de Campos Alencar e Silva were the first to be identified by forensic experts.
The government of the state of Sao Paulo said on Saturday evening that the remains of all the victims had been recovered, The Associated Press reported. Thirty-four male and 28 female bodies were found in the rubble, it said.
The twin-engine turboprop ATR 72 aircraft of the Brazilian airline Voepass was en route to Guarulhos International Airport in Sao Paulo with 58 passengers and four crew members when it crashed in Vinhedo, 78 kilometers north of the metropolis, on Friday. According to Voepass, three passengers, who had Brazilian IDs, also had Venezuelan documents, and one had Portuguese ones.
The Sao Paulo morgue began receiving the first bodies on Friday evening and asked the victims’ relatives to bring medical records, X-rays and dental records to facilitate the identification of the bodies. Blood tests were also carried out to facilitate identification.
The few family members who spoke about the tragedy did so on social media.
Local residents said there were no injuries on the ground.
It was the world’s deadliest plane crash since January 2023, when 72 people died on a Yeti Airlines plane in Nepal that went into a spin on approach and crashed. That plane was also an ATR 72, and the final report blamed pilot error.

Brazilian aviation expert Lito Sousa warned that meteorological conditions alone may not be enough to explain the way the Voepass plane crashed on Friday.
“Analyzing a plane crash based only on images can lead to incorrect conclusions about the causes,” Sousa told The Associated Press by phone. “But we can see a plane that has lost traction and no longer has horizontal speed. In that state of shallow spin, there is no way to regain control of the plane.”
The Brazilian Air Force said on Saturday that both of the plane’s flight recorders had been sent to its analysis laboratory in the capital Brasilia. The results of the investigation are expected to be published within 30 days, it said.