61 killed after plane crashes in Brazil, officials say. Video shows aircraft plummeting.

A regional plane carrying 61 people crashed Friday in a residential neighborhood in Brazil, killing all on board, the airline said, as emergency crews blanketed the area.

At a briefing Friday afternoon, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said, "I have to be the bearer of really bad news," and called for a minute of silence to honor those aboard the plane that crashed in Vinhedo, a city northwest of São Paulo. The cause of the crash was unknown, he said.

“It appears all have died,” Lula said.

In a social media post, Voepass, a regional airline based in São Paulo state, confirmed the crash of flight 2283. It said 57 passengers and four crew members were on board, all carrying Brazil-issued documents, and there were no survivors. An earlier statement said the plane was carrying 58 passengers.

Some of the passengers were doctors from Paraná heading to a seminar, Paraná Gov. Ratinho Júnior told journalists.

"These were people who were used to saving lives, and now they've lost theirs in such tragic circumstances," he said.

The plane departed from Cascavel, a Brazilian city near the country’s southern border with Paraguay and Argentina, and was headed to São Paulo's main international airport, in Guarulhos, Voepass said in its post.

FlightAware data indicated the plane, a twin-engine turboprop ATR-72, departed at 11:50 a.m. local time and was scheduled to land just before 2 p.m.

City officials in Valinhos, near Vinhedo, said one home in the local condominium complex was damaged but none of the residents were injured.

3 people refused entry to plane

Brazil's UOL news channel reported at least three passengers were refused entry to the plane before it took off from the city of Cascavel in the state of Parana.

"I missed my plane and the plane that I missed was the one that crashed. Did you see the news?" one of the lucky passengers, Adriano Silva de Assis, can be seen emotionally telling his daughter in a video posted on UOL and social media. "It's a good thing," Silva de Assis goes on to say. "I love you, I love you so much."

Brazilian media sources reported the passengers were initially angry with airline staff for refusing them entry to the flight.

UOL also interviewed a neighbor of the property where the plane crashed, who told the station he thought the pilot was attempting to divert it away from homes as it fell from the sky.

"I'm no expert, but it looked like the pilot wanted to miss the homes, so he flew into the gated community," gardener Gildo Pacheco told the station.

Pacheco said he heard loud noises coming from above and went outside where he saw the plane descending in a corkscrew pattern. He told his mother they should take cover in the basement but watched as the plane crashed into an adjacent neighborhood.

Pacheco then heard a loud explosion when the plane hit the ground, followed by another explosion a few minutes later.

Plane's black box recovered, officials say

The government of São Paulo state said on social media civil defense and public security officials mobilized in Vinhedo’s Capela neighborhood to respond to the crash. Firefighters were called about 1 p.m. local time and seven teams were immediately sent to the scene, the government’s post said.

Local hospitals were prepared to assist any patients.

“My solidarity to all victims and those affected by this tragedy,” São Paulo state Gov. Tarcísio Gomes de Freitas said in a social media post.

The Associated Press reported Brazilian officials closed the entrance to the residential neighborhood where the plane crashed.

Marcelo Moreno, who leads Brazil's aviation incident investigation center, CENIPA, cautioned in a news briefing it was still too early to determine the cause of the crash but shared an early glimpse into the investigation.

"From what we can tell so far, the aircraft did not reach out to traffic control reporting an emergency," Moreno said.

Voepass chief operations officer Marcel Moura said at a news briefing Friday that ice had been predicted at the altitudes the plane was flying at, but "within the acceptable range."

"But the plane is sensitive to ice, that could be a starting point," Moura added, noting the plane's de-icing system, along with the rest of the aircraft, had been deemed operational before takeoff.

Sao Paulo state official Guilherme Derrite said the plane's "black box" was recovered and it seemed to be intact.

The plane's manufacturer, ATR, released a statement Friday that said it was informed of the crash.

"Our first thoughts are with all the individuals affected by this event. The ATR specialists are fully engaged to support both the investigation and the customer," the company wrote.

A video shared by the site BNO news showed a plane, identified as Voepass Flight 2283, spinning out of control as it plunged behind a cluster of trees near houses, followed by a large plume of black smoke.

Nearby resident Daniel de Lima heard a loud noise before looking outside his condo in Vinhedo and saw the plane in a horizontal spiral.

"It was rotating, but it wasn't moving forward," he told Reuters. "Soon after, it fell out of the sky and exploded."

Footage posted on the news outlet UOL showed the airplane broken into pieces and still aflame between red tile roofs and trees in the Vinhedo neighborhood, about 50 miles northwest of São Paulo.

Plane may have stalled mid-air before tumbling down

Jaafar El-Awady, a professor of mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins University, told USA TODAY he was stunned by videos showing how the plane tumbled from the sky.

“It’s not like it was flying down. It looks more like a rock was falling out of the sky,” El-Awady said, indicating the plane stalled mid-air. Confirming what happened and why, however, could take months or even years, depending on the root cause.

To maintain flight, an airplane must stay above a certain speed. If it drops below that threshold, the aircraft starts to fall, El-Awady said. Pilots are trained to maneuver out of a stall, but if a plane has suffered critical damage, such as wing or tail problems, coupled with a failing engine, the mission could be doomed.

Since the aircraft that crashed Friday had two engines, if just one failed and there was no other damage, El-Awady said the pilot should have still been able to fly and land.

As an aerospace engineer who champions the safety of air travel, such an incident hits home.

“We have a lot more to do to ensure that these incidents don’t happen again,” he said.

Prior airplane crashes in Brazil

According to the Aviation Safety Network, three of the deadliest airplane crashes in South America have occurred in Brazil. The network is a service of the Flight Safety Foundation, an international nonprofit focused on aviation safety research and advocacy.

On July 17, 2007, all 187 people aboard a commercial airplane died in a runway excursion at the São Paulo-Congonhas Airport. Twelve people on the ground were also killed in that crash, which sparked a fire that took hours to extinguish, according to a report by Brazil’s Aeronautical Accident Investigation and Prevention Center.

Less than a year earlier, a domestic passenger flight and business jet collided mid-air, the Aviation Safety Network said. All 154 people aboard the Boeing 737 died, while the seven jet passengers survived.

And in the summer of 1982, in what the Aviation Safety Network said was the second worst accident that year, an airplane captain inadvertently descended far below 5,000 feet while he was distracted by bright city lights of Fortaleza, despite two altitude alerts and the co-pilot’s warning of mountains ahead, according to the network. The flight he was piloting struck a wooded mountainside at 1,950 feet. All 137 people aboard died.

Contributing: Reuters

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 61 killed in Brazil plane crash in Vinhedo, officials say