One of the 62 passengers killed in a plane crash in Brazil warned her family she was “so scared” as the ill-fated plane took off.
Rosana Xavier, 23, sent a series of messages to the WhatsApp group chat on Friday morning as Voepass Flight 2283 took off.
“Man, two hour flight,” she wrote at 11:47 a.m. in a post shared by her mother, Rosemeire Xavier. with TV Globo.
“We’re going to arrive in the rain. I’m so scared of this flight,” Rosana Xavier added. “I swear. The plane is old.”
A minute later, she texted her loved ones: “There’s a broken chair. I swear. Chaos.”
Rosana Xavier shares a selfie with her family in a WhatsApp group chat as the ill-fated flight takes off
Rosana Xavier sent a series of messages to her family before the plane crashed, killing all 62 people on board: ‘I’m so scared for this flight, I swear. The plane is old. There’s a broken seat. I swear. Chaos’
A concerned Xavier then took a selfie with a straight face and shared it with his family members.
The Voepass ATR-72 turboprop aircraft took off from Cascavel Regional Airport at 11:46 in Cascavel, Paraná and was en route to São Paulo/Guarulhos International Airport in São Paulo. It plunged from the sky and crashed into the backyard of an apartment building in the city of Vinhedo in the state of São Paulo.
The Brazilian Air Force said in a statement that the plane was flying normally at 1:20 p.m. but stopped responding to air traffic control after 1:21 p.m.
Rosemeire Xavier said she asked her daughter to read a Bible verse to calm her fears, but she too began to worry.
She heard about the crash from a news report on television.
“I was desperate,” she said. “I started running around the house screaming.”
Rosana Xavier flew back home to Franco de Rocha in São Paulo after attending working meetings in Toledo, Paraná
Aerial view of the wreckage of the Voepass plane next to the apartment building where it crashed Friday in Vinhedo, a city in the southeastern Brazilian state of São Paulo. All 58 passengers and four crew members were killed
Rosemeire Xavier said her daughter worked remotely from the family’s home in the São Paulo city of Franco de Rocha, but had to attend meetings in Toledo, Paraná, twice a month.
“She helped out at home with the groceries and bought her own car,” the grieving mother said. “Everything she had was for me, my husband, my girls. She only thought about us. Her money was for helping around the house.”
On Saturday, rescuers recovered the bodies of all 34 male passengers and 28 female passengers.
By Monday, only 17 victims had been identified, including pilot Danilo Romano and his co-pilot Humberto de Silva.