Anac says it was deceived by Voepass The final report from the Center for Research and Prevention of Aeronautical Accidents (Cenipa) on the crash of the Voepass plane, which killed 62 people in August 2024, points out that a strategic failure in decision-making by the National Civil Aviation Agency (Anac) contributed to the accident. According to the document, the agency's actions allowed Voepass to continue operating even in the face of violations identified during inspections. The conclusion places Anac among the contributing factors to the tragedy, alongside airline failures and piloting errors. Between 2022 and 2024, Anac inspectors notified Voepass ten times due to irregularities in the aircraft deicing system. According to the report, the company reported that repairs had been carried out and kept the aircraft in operation. The deicing system is identified by the investigation as one of the central elements in the plane crash. In an interview with Fantástico, the CEO of Anac, Álvaro Faierstein, stated that the Cenipa report points to the agency's actions as a contributing factor, but made a distinction between this and direct responsibility for the fall. "Cenipa points to Anac's actions as a contributing factor. It does not necessarily say that Anac was responsible for the plane crash." Faierstein said the agency received the investigation's findings carefully and intends to adopt the recommendations presented in the report. "Aviation is a very complex system. But we are looking with great humility at Cenipa's recommendations for us and we will adopt them." Asked why Voepass continued flying even after identifying irregularities, the president of Anac stated that the company provided false information to inspectors. According to him, in an assisted operation, an agency inspector could demand the replacement of a part and, later, find a document stating that the replacement had been carried out — although, in practice, the repair had not been carried out. "A lot of the information that the company sent us was false information. I'll cite an example: in the assisted operation, an Anac inspector called the Voepass mechanic and said: 'Oh, you have to change this part here'. When the inspector went there to see, he saw that he had the exchange document, that he had reported the change, but in practice he hadn't changed anything." When asked if, in short, Anac had been deceived by Voepass, Faierstein replied: "I can say yes. Very yes. Our technical team, our technical staff, carried out analyzes based on documents that were not true documents." The president of Anac also stated that, before the accident, the agency's technical team had already identified a degradation in the airline's operations. "In the years before the accident, our technical team detected degradation. There were several maintenance problems, false reports, that the company said it was changing certain equipment or not changing it at all. Or did it the wrong way.” Anac's CEO, Álvaro Faierstein, in an interview with Fantástico Reproduction/TV Globo According to the report, in 2023, Voepass accounted for 82% of the failures highlighted by Anac among the country's airlines, despite accounting for just 0.6% of flights carried out in Brazil. The agency definitively banned the company from operating only in June 2025, ten months after the accident. Faierstein stated that, after the case, Anac decided to change the decision-making process regarding the suspension of airlines. According to him, the decision on whether or not to keep a company in operation will no longer be limited solely to the technical area and will involve the agency's management. “It’s a very subjective decision. So we are bringing this to the board to make a decision.” Asked if this would mean recognizing that Anac is not just a technical body, Faierstein replied: “I'm not saying political. But it is a body that has to have a matrix vision, a view from above.” When asked what argument could be more important than planes operating in precarious conditions and at risk of causing deaths, the agency's president reiterated that the inspections had identified non-conformities, but stated that the problem lay in the information provided by the company. “The inspections were carried out, non-conformities were detected. But what happened was that the company reported to Anac that it had carried out the maintenance. And, in fact, there wasn’t.” President of Anac says the agency was deceived by Voepass Reproduction/TV Globo What Cenipa's report revealed Cenipa's final report concluded that a combination of Voepass failures, crew errors and deficiencies in Anac's inspection contributed to the plane crash in Vinhedo (SP), in August 2024. The document, with 258 pages, points out that the company maintained an organizational culture that allowed repairs to be postponed and problems considered serious to continue. The deicing system appears as one of the main points of the investigation. According to Cenipa, the ATR 72 that crashed took off with the equipment inoperative and faced successive warnings of ice formation during the flight. The investigation concluded that, given the accumulation of ice on the wings, the crew maintained the aircraft at an altitude where conditions were favorable for ice formation, instead of seeking a safer level. With the loss of lift, the plane entered a stall and then a flat spin — a situation considered rare in commercial aviation. The aircraft lost approximately 14,000 feet of altitude in approximately one minute before hitting the ground. In a statement, Voepass stated that it has always adopted rigorous safety, training and maintenance procedures, and said that its pilots were experienced and certified. Anac definitively suspended the company's operations in June 2025. With the conclusion of the Cenipa report, investigations began