ATR 72 crash, Cascavel and São Paulo, 9th August 2024

Oh ****.

That's horrific.

The video has already been posted above I think

That's terrible to watch. I recall stories from Aer Lingus pilots training in FLA about how difficult it can be to recover a twin from a flat spin.

That's just 2 minutes to fall 17000 feet and it had held that height for some time.

Been revised to 61 I believe (not that it matters here)

terribly tragic. RIP

a NOTAM was issued for icing between 12000 and 21000ft in the corridor they were in, PS-VPB was at 17000ft when they hit trouble

There are a few reasons why they don't bother putting parachutes on planes:

1. The air pressure difference inside and outside makes opening the door impossible.

2. The air is thin up there. Without an oxygen tank, you'll die of asphyxiation.

3. It's freezing up there. For jet planes, which fly at a higher altitude, it's between -40° C to -60° C. You'll freeze to death. With this plane, which was a propellor plane and flew at a lower altitude, it was between -10° C to -13° C.

4. Flying at a lower altitude gives you less time to evacuate the passengers. This plane went from 5000m to a fireball in less than 2 minutes.

A friend of my family who was an expert in aerodynamics used to talk about the Fokker 50 design and how a small amount of ice buildup in the wings badly degraded their performance.