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

globalnews.ca:

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.

“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.

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,