Small plane crashes into traffic in Brazilian city of Sao Paulo

A small aircraft has crashed on a road in Sao Paulo shortly after taking off from a nearby private airport, killing the pilot and the plane’s owner.

The plane went down in the busy Barra Funda neighbourhood in the west side of the city.

A piece of the plane hit a bus, injuring one woman inside, while a motorcyclist was struck by another piece of wreckage, firefighters said.

A later statement said that four more people who were injured were taken to hospitals in the area with minor injuries.

Governor Tarcisio de Freitas said that the two dead were the pilot, Gustavo Medeiros, and the owner of the aircraft, Marcio Carpena.

A CCTV video obtained by the local television network TV Globo showed the moment of the crash. The plane slammed into the avenue a few metres past an intersection, where a queue of cars was waiting to move forward.

Images on local media showed the plane’s fuselage and the bus on fire, with firefighters working to extinguish the blaze. The avenue is home to office buildings and there is a bus, train and subway station nearby.

There was no word as to what had caused the plane to lose altitude less than three miles from the private airport from where it had departed a few minutes earlier. It was bound for Porto Alegre, in the southern Rio Grande do Sul state.

The Brazilian Air Force said it would investigate the accident as fast as possible.

Brazil has had a number of deadly aircraft crashes in recent years, including one last August in Vinhedo, near Sao Paulo that was particularly shocking.

Images from that crash showed a passenger plane falling in a flat spin before crashing into the backyard of a home in a gated community, killing all those on board.