Anac considered Voepass parts regular and fired a server who alerted foreign authorities

The diagnosis was made by the agency following a report presented by one of its employees. Anac management used the conclusion to increase the punishment against this employee, who had taken the case to the aeronautical authorities in the United States and Europe.

The agency concluded, according to information obtained by the report, that the ATR 72-500 aircraft, registration PS-VPB, which crashed in Vinhedo on August 9, 2024, did not use components removed from another plane involved in an incident in 2016, according to an inspection by Anac itself. The accident aircraft would only enter the company's fleet three years later, without receiving components from the old plane.

The Federal Police sent a copy of the report investigating the crash of the Voepass plane so that the institution's Regional Inspectorate in São Paulo can analyze a possible occurrence of the crime of malfeasance, when a public agent fails to fulfill his duty, or passive corruption on the part of a member of Anac. The PF indicted 16 people for the plane crash.

The controversy over the parts involves an aircraft from the then Passaredo, which later became Voepass, which suffered an incident during landing in Rondonópolis (MT), in 2016. After that, it would have been "cannibalized", a term used in aviation for the removal of components from a plane out of operation for use in others.

In a report by "Fantástico", shown on Sunday (9), former company employees stated that parts of this aircraft were reused in the fleet and raised doubts about the control of this process.

Anac's internal documents show that José Volter Morais Coutinho, a technician in Civil Aviation Regulation, had raised suspicions about the traceability of components used by Voepass.

In February 2022, while the matter was still being investigated internally by the agency, he decided to take the alert directly to the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), in the United States, and EASA (European Union Aviation Safety Agency), in the European Union.

According to the agency, Coutinho used Anac's institutional channels to alert foreign authorities about the "possible use of supposedly suspicious aeronautical parts on aircraft abroad."

Upon learning of the episode, Anac concluded that Coutinho did not have authorization or technical support to make that communication. It was also important that the server took restricted information outside of Anac while an investigation was still underway.

The agency's reaction to the alert came a few days later. On February 15, 2022, six days after Coutinho's communication, the then Anac Continued Airworthiness Certification manager, Lawrence Josuá Fernandes Costa, sent a new email to the American and European authorities.

The message had the objective of trying to "mitigate possible effects and losses caused by the accused".

Anac's technical investigation, which was ongoing, continued and reached a conclusion favorable to Voepass. At the end of the investigation, the then deputy director-president of Anac, Tiago Sousa Pereira, said that "the result of the investigation of possible irregularities in the parts concluded that the air operator [Voepass] was successful in demonstrating the traceability of the components, with no reason to classify the parts as suspicious".

Traceability is the ability to document the origin and history of an aeronautical component. These records allow you to monitor information such as identification, origin and interventions carried out on a part and are part of the control necessary for a component to be used on an aircraft.

The case led to the opening of a PAD (Disciplinary Administrative Process) against Coutinho, on June 12, 2023. In addition to addressing issues linked to contact with FAA and EASA, the process investigated alleged problems with functional relationships, resistance to carrying out activities and demonstrations against colleagues and superiors.

On February 19, 2024, the PAD came to an end, with a 75-day suspension proposed by the commission. But, on April 18, 2024, Pereira disagreed with the disciplinary committee and decided to give a more serious framework to the facts investigated.

For the CEO of Anac, these were not just functional problems that could be suspended. There would have been "serious insubordination on duty" for two years.

The agency's management considered that Coutinho acted with "serious guilt" due to imprudence in using his institutional email and presenting himself as an agency employee to issue an alert without authorization or technical support. He was fired on April 18, 2024, about four months before the Voepass accident.

On August 9, 2024, the Voepass ATR crashed during a flight between Cascavel (PR) and Guarulhos (SP). The 62 people on board died.

According to Anac, there is no connection between the use of parts from other planes and the accident in Vinhedo. In the report, the agency said that the technical assessments highlighted by Coutinho "followed the agency's regular flow of analysis and were submitted for consideration by other technical and decision-making bodies, as routinely occurs" in administrative processes.

"It is worth noting that the former employee dealt with a hypothesis that, at the end of the inspection process, was discarded," said Anac. When analyzing the case, the agency pointed out that "there was no irregularity in the use of the parts, but failure to comply with inspection registration formalities before labeling the product for subsequent use."

"It was about adjusting the company's procedure, so that it included the execution of inspection registration formalities before labeling. The company incorporated the procedure into its routine, executing it for all components in