Two would-be passengers say they cheated death on Friday after a mix-up resulted in them missing their flight aboard the doomed VoePass airliner which crashed in Brazil and killing all 62 people on board.
The two passengers were scheduled to fly on the ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop but told a Brazilian news outlet how they failed to make the flight, which ended up saving their lives. One of them said they were part of a group of 10 who missed the ill-fated flight.
One man, Adriano Assis, told GloboNews that he had finished his shift at a hospital and made it to the LATAM Airlines counter at around 9:40 a.m. for the 11:56 a.m. flight from Cascavel to Guarulhos.
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Assis said that he noticed that there were no agents at the the LATAM desk so he grabbed a coffee while looking at the departure and arrival screens for updates on Flight 2283.
“The microphone didn’t say anything, the boards didn’t say anything about the flight either,” he said.
He said that he realized that he had actually booked his flight with the airline VoePass, not LATAM. He then made his way to a counter but there was a huge line and by the time he got to an agent it was too late for entry.
“The guy said I wouldn’t be boarding anymore because it was an hour before boarding,” Assis said.
He said he pleaded with the agent to allow him to board the flight but the agent refused.
“I argued with him and stuff, and that was it, and he saved my life, man,” he told the outlet as he teared up 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, according to The Associated Press.
Footage showed the plane drifting downward vertically, spiraling as it fell. The wreckage site showed an area on fire with smoke coming out of an obliterated plane fuselage. Firefighters, military police and the civil defense authority all 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.”
When he found an agent, he said he pressured 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 he was past the boarding time limit.
“And he said there was no way and what I can do for you is reschedule your ticket,” Felipe said.
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The Capela neighborhood where the plane crashed sits far from the center of the city that’s home to 77,000 residents.
At an event in southern Brazil on Friday, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva asked the crowd to stand and observe a minute of silence as he shared the news.
VoePass staff at the Guarulhos airport told the Associated Press that the company was notifying victims’ family members and supporting them at a private room in the airport.
He said that it appeared that all passengers and crew aboard had died, without elaborating as to how that information had been obtained.
Aviation expert and former pilot Arthur Rosenberg said video of the plane appears to show the airliner stalling in midair.
“A stall is when the plane is not moving through the air fast enough, forward motion, to be able to maintain lift to stay in the air,” he told Fox News Channel’s “The Story.” “The sound tells me there was something wrong with one or both engines.”
The radar data shows a “rapid descent,” which could have been attributed to an engine failure or some other malfunction, he said.
“It looked like it dropped 17,000 feet in about two minutes,” Rosenberg said.
The airliner is an ATR 72-500 twin-engine turboprop which is used for shorter flights.
In a statement, the plane’s manufacturer, French-Italian ATR, said company specialists are “fully engaged to support both the investigation and the customer.”
The plane’s black box, or flight data recorder, has been recovered by officials.
Fox News’ Greg Norman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.