Major update in Brazil plane crash as ‘pilot reported malfunction' the day before tragedy, ex-employee reveals a year on
It comes almost a year of the aircraft spiralled down to the ground and exploded in a huge fireball - tragically killing all 62 people on board.
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A former employee said they witnessed the final maintenance of the ATR 72-500 before it took off for Cascavel on August 9, 2024.
He told g1 the pilot who operated the plane the night prior to the crash reported to the maintenance team that he had experienced problems with the aircraft's de-icing system.
The failure was allegedly omitted from the technical logbook and ignored by management - when it reportedly should have prevented the plane from taking off.
The ex-employee said how staff were pressured by company management to avoid aircraft downtime for maintenance, adding that there was also little time to assess the condition of aircraft.
He told g1: "The leader himself asked: 'Well, if he didn't report it in the log, there's no problem with the aircraft.'
"That was the company's legacy: if the captain reports it, there's maintenance action; if he doesn't report it, they won't waste time with anything he says."
The Aeronautical Accident Investigation and Prevention Center suggested in the preliminary report that the plane's blackbox captured a conversation between the pilots in which they mentioned a failure in the de-icing system.
De-icing systems are crucial in aviation as ice can negatively affect aerodynamic performance - potentially increasing the aircraft's weight and impairing its speed and lift.
The former employee believes that had this problem been reported to the logbook, the tragic crash would have been avoided.
The Voepass Airlines plane was previously labelled an "old wreck" and was only in service for weeks before the deadly plunge.
Passengers and their families complained about the aircraft just 24 hours before it spiralled down to the ground and exploded in a huge fireball last week.
The plane smashed into a residential area of the city of Vinhedo, with neighbours filming it dropping and crashing.
The Voepass flight had left Cascavel, in the Parana state, and was bound for Guarulhos, in Sao Paulo.
Valinhos City Hall later confirmed all on board were dead and that no residents on the ground were injured or killed.
One grieving mother said that Friday's crash "wasn't a fatality, it was a crime" after the plane horrifically dropped out of the sky in a death spiral.
Maria de Fátima Albuquerque lost her daughter Arianne Albuquerque Risso in the crash, who was a resident doctor in oncology at the Cascavel Cancer Hospital.
An emotional Mrs Albuquerque told Globo G1 at the time: 'It wasn't a fatality, anyone who was on that plane would have died, because it was an old wreck.
"It wasn't a fatality, it was a crime. Who can ease my pain? You'll see me fighting every day."
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A tragic passenger on the fatal flight had also sent messages to her family saying she was 'scared' of the 'old' plane.
Rosana Santos Xavier, 23, had expressed her concern about the ATR 72-500 aircraft in the family chat group shortly after boarding.
She wrote: 'I'm so scared of this flight, I swear, it's an old plane.
'There's a broken seat, it's chaos.'
The 23-year-old's mum, Rosemeire dos Santos Xavier, told her to read a Psalm to calm her nerves.
But she says deep down, she had a bad feeling.
A short while later, Rosemeire saw on the news that a plane had crashed.
Rosemeire told local media: 'I panicked. I started running around the house screaming.'
Rosana was heading back to her home in Franco da Rocha near São Paulo, Brazil, after a work trip.
All flights grounded at multiple major UK airports over 'radar failure' as holidaymakers are left 'stranded'
The plane had also been undergoing a series of maintenance shutdowns, Brazilian news programme Fantastico has found.
In March, the Voepass aircraft experienced a hydraulic problem and abnormal contact with the runway that caused "structural damage", leaving the aircraft out of operation for four months.
And just a day before Friday's horror crash, passengers on board the same plane reported suffering from the sweltering heat due to faulty air conditioning.
During the flight, passengers reported that they faced extreme heat due to the malfunctioning air conditioning, with one of them saying the temperature was "unbearable".
People were trying to cool down as best they could, with one man even taking off his shirt because of the sweltering heat.
Voepass said in a statement that the safety has always been the company's priority, adding it "has always acted in compliance with the strict requirements that guarantee the safety of its air operations".
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