VASP Flight 280

VASP Flight 280 was a flight of the company VASP that was the target of a hijacking and robbery on 16 August 2000, carried out by Marcelo Moacir Borelli and four accomplices, with the aim of stealing bags of money belonging to the Banco do Brasil that were in the aircraft's hold in the custody of the cash-in-transit company TGV.

The flight, operated by a Boeing 737-200 aircraft, departed from Foz de Iguaçu for São Luís do Maranhão and was to make stopovers in Curitiba, Rio de Janeiro and Brasília. In the initial phase of the flight, between Foz and Curitiba, the aircraft was hijacked and diverted to Porecatu, a town in Paraná located in the north of the state, on the border with the state of São Paulo. After landing at Porecatu Airport, the robbers loaded the money bags, containing about five million reais according to witnesses, into two Ford Ranger pickups with accomplices who were waiting for them at the airport, and escaped without leaving any trace. Subsequently, the aircraft took off for Londrina, located about 90 km away, where it was examined and the passengers were rerouted to their destinations. About 30 passengers were foreign tourists returning from a visit to the Iguaçu Falls and the Itaipu Hydroelectric Plant.

Marcelo Borelli and other robbers were eventually arrested later, but the money was not recovered. Borelli died of AIDS on 11 January 2007, while serving a 177-year prison sentence at the Piraquara Penitentiary, in the Curitiba Metropolitan Region.

The Boeing 737-200 aircraft, registration PP-SMG, after VASP's bankruptcy, was broken up on 18 October 2011, after having remained inactive for many years at Congonhas Airport, in the city of São Paulo, having been sold as scrap.