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2021 Palmas FR plane crash

24 Jan 2021 · Porto Nacional, Tocantins

Construtora Meirelles Mascarenhas Beechcraft Baron 95-B55 · Crashed shortly after takeoff due to overloading

From Associação Tocantinense de Aviação Aerodrome, Tocantins to Santa Genoveva Aerodrome, Goiás

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Event

NTSB case
ERA21WA118
Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
Accident
InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
Event fatalities
6 · all aircraft and ground
Ground fatalities
Unknown
Occupants
Unknown
Survivors
0
InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
0 serious · 0 minor (NTSB)
OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
General aviation
WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
Not recorded

Beechcraft Baron 95-B55

Aircraft type
Beechcraft Baron 95
Category
Airplane
RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
PT-LYG
Onboard fatalities
6
Route
From Associação Tocantinense de Aviação Aerodrome, TocantinsTo Santa Genoveva Aerodrome, Goiás
Aircraft age
About 39 years (built 1982)
Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
Non-U.S., Non-Commercial
Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
Takeoff
Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
Aerodynamic stall/spin
DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
Substantial

Cause areas

  • Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
  • Personnel issues › Task performance
  • Personnel issues › Action/decision

From the investigation findings the Wikipedia article reports, sorted into the NTSB's cause areas with AI assistance.

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

From the Wikipedia article

The 2021 Palmas FR plane crash took place on 24 January 2021, when a private Beechcraft Baron belonging to the Palmas Futebol e Regatas, a Brazilian association football team, crashed on takeoff from Associação Tocantinense de Aviação Aerodrome, a private airfield near Porto Nacional, Tocantins, Brazil. All six people on board were killed: four footballers, the team's owner, and the pilot. The team was en route to Goiânia for a regional cup football game between Palmas and Vila Nova, for the Brazilian Copa Verde championship.

Investigation and cause

Investigation

The Aeronautical Accidents Investigation and Prevention Center (CENIPA) performed a post-crash accident investigation and issued a final report dated 30 March 2023.

Ground witnesses told CENIPA that the aircraft lifted off the runway and pitched up but did not climb; it then touched down briefly while still over the runway, lifted off a second time, and the landing gear retracted. The aircraft then settled in a wings-level attitude and crashed 150 m past the end of the runway, slightly to the left of the extended runway centerline. An intense post-crash fire consumed the bodies of the aircraft occupants and all baggage and paperwork in the fuselage.

CENIPA found that the occupants and baggage were not weighed before the flight, and was unable to verify precise aircraft weight and loading due to the fire damage, which CENIPA said presumably obliterated any weight-and-balance paperwork that the pilot may have completed. However, based on information gathered from the football team and the owner and players' relatives and friends, CENIPA calculated that the aircraft was loaded far in excess of its permissible gross weight, possibly by about 300 kg, and it was loaded about 2 in beyond its aft center of gravity (CG) limit; furthermore, the retraction of the landing gear would have caused the CG to shift even further aft. CENIPA stated that the probable cause of the accident was a loss of lift and control caused by improper loading; contributing factors were the pilot's failure to follow operational standards, his poor flight planning which did not take proper weight and balance into account, and his failure to reject the takeoff when the plane would not climb.

Text from the Wikipedia article “2021 Palmas FR plane crash” (revision 1375527955, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article

Sources

Wikipedia article: 2021 Palmas FR plane crash
Article
2021 Palmas FR plane crash
Revision
1375527955 · 2026-09-18 · retrieved 2026-09-18
Wikidata
Q105063804
Licence
Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record ERA21WA118
Event ID
20210128102570
Case number
ERA21WA118
Dataset
full-current
Source SHA-256
5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
Record
Wikipedia article "2021 Palmas FR plane crash" (page 66485940, revision 1375527955); merged with NTSB case ERA21WA118 (events / aircraft)
Date
Wikipedia infobox: date
Place and country
Wikipedia infobox: site; country from Wikidata (P17)
Map position
NTSB record ERA21WA118: events decimal coordinates
Aircraft, operator and route
Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports); gaps and aircraft details from NTSB record ERA21WA118
Operation
Reviewed correction (2026-09-26): A private aircraft owned by a football club, carrying its own players and owner: a private flight for the owner. The article: "a private Beechcraft Baron belonging to the Palmas Futebol e Regatas, a Brazilian association football team"
Fatalities
Wikipedia: Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities
Ground fatalities
Wikipedia: not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
Summary
Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (2)
  • One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "2021 Palmas FR plane crash" and NTSB case ERA21WA118, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this event outside the United States Wikipedia's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
  • No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.