Air safety expert on plane crash in Brazil: ‘I wouldn’t fly ’em’

Mary Schiavo carefully describes what she saw happen when Voepass Linhas Aéreas Flight 2283 plummeted to the ground in Brazil Friday, an airline crash that killed all 62 aboard.

“This video provided a tremendous number of clues,” Schiavo told Global News in an interview from Charleston, S.C., commenting on mobile phone video showing the passenger plane in a flat spin.

The aviation attorney and former Inspector General for the United States Department of Transportation was asked to review what investigators will be examining in the wake of the crash of the ATR 72-500 near Sao Paolo, Brazil.

“It was clear that they had a total aerodynamic stall and by the time that video was captured there was no way to save that plane,” Schiavo said.

Flight tracking data shows that the French-made twin-engine turboprop plane dropped 17,000 feet in just one minute, although the reasons for the rapid descent are not known yet.

Based on the video and audio shared widely on social media, Schiavo says it appears the plane still had power.

“That was useful to know that the engines were still running, they hadn’t had an engine failure,” she said.

Even so, based on video and radar, the passenger plane appeared to drop from the sky.

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“According to the radar, it was very rapid. They were at 204 knots, and then they had no forward movement at all,” she said.

“There was no air traffic control communication, there was no Mayday, there was no advice to the tower that they needed the airway cleared for them, nothing; they had no time to communicate,” Schiavo added.

1:43 Brazil plane crash: No survivors from flight with 61 passengers, authorities say

Some aviation experts in Brazil suggest the crash may have been the result of icing, an issue that has previously been the cause of accidents involving the ATR 72.

Most notably, on Oct. 31, 1994, American Eagle Flight 4184 travelling between Indianapolis and Chicago ran into severe icing conditions. The ATR 72 lost control and crashed into a field. All 68 people aboard were killed.

At the time of the crash in Brazil, it was reported that there was an active weather alert for “high risk of freezing” along the plane’s flight path.

Transport Canada certified the ATR 72-500 for service in Canada in 2017. At the time, the French-Italian consortium claimed the aircraft was “the perfect match for challenging markets, such as Canada.”

In a news release, ATR boasted about the aircraft’s capability “to fly in extreme cold, icy weather conditions, take off and land on unpaved and short runways, and their unrivalled performance are invaluable.”

Carriers with ATR aircraft in their fleet include Calm Air, a regional airline in Manitoba, Canadian North, which services the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and some provinces, and North Star, based in Thunder Bay, Ont.

While it may take weeks for investigators to pinpoint the cause of the crash in Brazil, after reviewing the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, Schiavo agrees that Transport Canada may want to review its certification of the ATR 72 depending on the outcome of the investigation.

She says she understands why someone would be cautious about flying this type of aircraft given renewed concerns about icing.

“Fear is a very important emotion and feeling and frankly, on an ATR in icing, after seeing that accident, I frankly wouldn’t want to get in one either in icing,” she said.

“I can tell you after the 1995 report in the United States of America, where there was the terrible icing accident with the ATR, I wouldn’t fly ’em,”