The plane was forced to make an emergency landing on the beach in Palos, a city on the coast of the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, in the south of the country, on Saturday afternoon local time, early evening in Portugal. The dexterity of the pilot and the noise the plane made before it crashed, and the warning of those on the sand, prevented casualties, but there was much haste and desperation among those on the ground, especially since the previous day’s plane crash in Sao Paulo had left dozens injured.
The accident occurred at Praia do Sonho, one of the most visited beaches in Palos, which is located in the metropolitan area of the state capital Florianopolis. Even though it was a cold afternoon, when the south and southeast of Brazil were facing a wave of extreme cold, many people took advantage of the day to walk on the sand and came very close to getting hurt.
Those on the beach were alerted by the noise of the plane’s only engine, which began to fail, and when they looked up, they saw that the plane was shaking violently, threatening to crash at any moment. Everyone was scared and ran, avoiding the possible collision of the plane with the ground, which made the pilot’s job easier.
With the beach clear, he managed to land, and of course, as is now the custom, everyone around him held out their mobile phones to film the accident. Even with the violence of the plane’s impact with the beach sand, no one appeared to be seriously injured, and beachgoers themselves helped the pilot until the rescue teams arrived by helicopter and overland a few minutes later.
A day earlier, at about the same time but on Friday, 62 people, including a Portuguese university professor based in Santa Catarina’s neighboring state of Paraná, were killed when a twin-engine plane crashed in the city of Vinhedo, 70 km from Sao Paulo. The accident, believed to have been caused by a buildup of frozen droplets on the wings of the Voepass ATR 72-500 flying between Cascavel, Paraná, and Sao Paulo, was the fifth-deadliest air disaster in Brazilian history in terms of fatalities.