Two prospective passengers have revealed that they narrowly escaped death on Friday after a booking mix-up caused them to miss their flight on the ill-fated VoePass airliner in Brazil, which claimed the lives of all 62 people on board.
The two passengers were originally scheduled to be on the ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop but disclosed to a Brazilian news outlet how their failure to board the flight ultimately saved their lives. One of the passengers mentioned being part of a group of 10 who missed the doomed flight.
One of the passengers, Adriano Assis, told GloboNews that he had finished his shift at a hospital and arrived at the counter around 9:40 a.m. for the 11:56 a.m. flight from Cascavel to Guarulhos.
Assis explained that he noticed the absence of agents at the LATAM desk and decided to grab a coffee while checking the departure and arrival screens for updates on Flight 2283.
“The microphone didn’t announce anything, and the boards didn’t display any information about the flight either,” he stated.
He realized he had actually booked his flight with VoePass, not LATAM. He then headed towards a counter but encountered a long queue. By the time he reached an agent, it was too late to board.
“The agent informed me that I wouldn’t be able to board anymore because it was an hour before departure,” Assis recounted.
He pleaded with the agent to allow him to board, but the agent refused.
“I argued with him, and that was it. He saved my life, man,” he told the outlet, his voice filled with emotion. “He did his job because… if he hadn’t done it… maybe I wouldn’t be in this interview today. Sorry.”
VoePass Flight 2283 crashed into a residential area in the city of Vinhedo, carrying 57 passengers and four crew members, according to The Associated Press.
Footage captured the plane descending vertically, spiraling as it fell. The wreckage site depicted an area engulfed in flames with smoke billowing from a shattered plane fuselage. Firefighters, military police, and the civil defense authority dispatched teams to the crash site.
Another passenger, Jose Felipe, said he was part of a group of 10 people who made the same mistake.
“I thought I was going to leave on LATAM, which was closed,” he told GloboNews.
“Thank God, we didn’t get on that plane. We didn’t know it was going to be with that company [VoePass], we thought it was going to be with LATAM, and LATAM was closed. I even arrived early [at the airport] and waited, waited and nothing.”
Upon finding an agent, he pressed the worker to get him on the flight.
“Sir, I have to get on this plane. I have to go,” Felipe said he told the airline worker, who refused to board him, citing the boarding time limit.
“He said there was no way, and the only option was to reschedule my ticket,” Felipe stated.
The Capela neighborhood, where the plane crashed, is located far from the city center, home to 77,000 residents.
At an event on Friday, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva requested the crowd to stand and observe a minute of silence as he shared the news.
VoePass staff at the Guarulhos airport informed The Associated Press that the company was notifying victims’ family members and providing support in a private room at the airport.
He stated that it appeared that all passengers and crew aboard the aircraft had perished, without elaborating on how that information had been obtained.
Aviation expert and former pilot Arthur Rosenberg said video footage of the plane appears to show the airliner stalling in midair.
“A stall occurs when the plane is not moving through the air fast enough, forward motion, to maintain lift to stay in the air,” he explained to Fox News Channel’s “The Story.” “The sound indicates something was wrong with one or both engines.”
Radar data reveals a “rapid descent,” which could be attributed to engine failure or another malfunction, he said.
“It appeared to have dropped 17,000 feet in about two minutes,” Rosenberg added.
The airliner is an ATR 72-500 twin-engine turboprop, typically used for shorter flights.
In a statement, the plane’s manufacturer, ATR, said company specialists are “fully engaged to support both the investigation and the customer.”
Officials have recovered the plane’s black box, or flight data recorder.
’ Greg Norman and