The Civil Police of Minas Gerais released this Friday (4) a report on the progress of the investigation into the plane crash that resulted in the death of singer Marília Mendonça and four other occupants. The plane crash completes one year this Saturday (5).
Authorities are still trying to understand why the pilot of the aircraft flew at low altitude, which caused the collision with the electrical grid in the vicinity of the airfield.
“We need to understand why the pilot was flying so low at that location. The Civil Police wants to present the solution of the case as quickly as possible, but with great responsibility. As a precaution, we understand that we need to discard this machine factor, that is, a factor that for some reason presented a problem that caused the pilot to fly so low, that he crashed into the transmission line”, said delegate Ivan Lopes, responsible for the inquiry.
The delegate informed that the Civil Police also ruled out that the pilot had suffered any kind of sudden illness or was under the influence of medication or drugs. He also said that if engine failure is ruled out, the investigation will move towards “human error”.
“Traffic control by the pilot [para pouso] it was made in a way that is not the standard in Caratinga, that is, it left the protection zone of the aerodrome. Now, we await the reports from Cenipa. If we rule out engine failures, we are able to walk towards the conclusion of a human error,” he said.
According to Lopes, the airfield works only with visual flights – that is, without instruments or control tower. Investigations indicate that, on the day of the accident, the visual conditions were good.
Regarding the electrical network at the location, the delegate says that there was no specific requirement for signaling, since the towers are outside the aerodrome’s protection zone.
“In this protection zone there is a document issued by Decea [Departamento de Controle do Espaço Aéreo], called Notam, which includes any type of obstacle within the protection zone of the aerodrome, within that circumference of 3 kilometers. The towers are 4,600 meters from the runway threshold. This is another factor that we kind of discarded, of mandatory signage”, explained the delegate.
The accident happened on November 5, 2021, in Piedade de Caratinga, in the interior of Minas, when the plane crashed into the transmission network of Companhia Energética de Minas Gerais (Cemig), moments before the landing that would take place at the local airfield.
Source: CNN Brasil
