Brazilian plane crash kills 33

BRASILIA: All 33 people aboard a Brazilian passenger plane were killed when it crashed in the Amazon jungle just minutes from landing at the industrial city of Manaus, aviation authorities said on Saturday.

The propeller aircraft operated by Rico Linhas Aereas fell into dense jungle about 15km from Manaus airport at 6:37pm Friday in northwest Amazonas state, 2,000km northwest of the capital, Brasilia.

The turbo-prop, carrying 30 passengers and three crew, was on a normal approach in clear skies when it disappeared off the radar screen, Brazil’s regional civil aviation service said. “There wasn’t even time to for him (the pilot) to speak, it was so fast,” Geraldo Gomes Alves, head of the agency in Manaus, told Reuters. “He was maybe two minutes from landing.”

The airline said the passengers were all Brazilians over the age of 12. Rescue crews abandoned the search for survivors and wreckage along the banks of the Rio Negro River on Saturday after only finding scattered human remains and unidentifiable fragments of the aircraft. “They only found small wreckage. No survivors,” a spokesman for Rico Linhas Aereas told national radio.

The lack of any large pieces of wreckage indicated the plane exploded, the company spokesman said. —Reuters

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