Voepass Linhas Aéreas

In Brazilian domestic traffic, Voepass’s ATR turboprops were a familiar sight for almost three decades – first as Passaredo, later under a new name. Internationally, though, the airline became known mainly for one tragic day: the crash of Flight 2283 in August 2024. A few months later, Voepass lost its operating certificate. This page puts into context what made the airline what it was, how you can recognize its aircraft in photos and how the accident and the license revocation are connected.

Voepass at a glance

Voepass Linhas Aéreas was a Brazilian regional airline based in Ribeirão Preto, a large city in the interior of São Paulo state. It was founded by the entrepreneur José Luiz Felício in 1995 under the name Passaredo Transportes Aéreos; flight operations began in July 1995. The home base was Leite Lopes Airport (RAO) in Ribeirão Preto.

Passaredo filled a gap that Brazil’s big airlines left open: connections between mid-sized cities in the hinterland and the metropolises. That takes smaller aircraft that can also handle shorter runways – at first turboprops from Embraer, later regional jets and in the end exclusively ATRs.

From 2019 the airline appeared under the name Voepass. It never quite shook off the old name, though: the ICAO code PTB and the callsign “PASSAREDO” stayed, and when the authority revoked the operating certificate in 2025, it formally named Passaredo as the parent company of the group.

Since June 24, 2025, Voepass no longer flies. So if you search for the airline today, it is about archive photos, registration history and the review of one of the worst accidents in Brazilian aviation in recent years.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code 2Z: appeared in the flight number, on tickets and on departure boards.
• ICAO code PTB: appeared in the air traffic control flight plan and on flight trackers – derived from the old name Passaredo. How IATA and ICAO codes differ is explained in the guide IATA and ICAO codes explained.
• Callsign PASSAREDO: this is how crews identified themselves on the radio, even after the switch to the Voepass brand. You will find more examples of callsigns with a backstory under Airline callsigns and their history.

For your archive, this is a practical detail: if you want to place old tracker screenshots or radio recordings, you don’t search for “Voepass” but for PTB or PASSAREDO. From April 2023, LATAM also sold many Voepass flights under a codeshare – departure boards then sometimes showed a LATAM flight number even though a Voepass ATR was flying – how that works is shown in Codeshare flights explained. How to find a specific aircraft by registration or transponder code is explained in the guide Tracking an aircraft by registration.

History: from Passaredo to Voepass

The company’s history is a series of restarts. For spotters it matters because it explains why such different aircraft types and names turn up on old photos.

Period	Event
1995	Founded as Passaredo Transportes Aéreos in Ribeirão Preto, starting with the Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia
1997–1999	Brief excursion into the widebody class with two Airbus A310s
April 2002	Flight operations suspended due to financial problems
2004	Restart as Passaredo Linhas Aéreas
from 2009	Embraer ERJ 145 and ERJ 135 replace the EMB 120; the last EMB 120s leave in 2011
October 2012	Filing for court-supervised reorganization, completed in 2017
2017	Sale to the Itapemirim group agreed and canceled again a few weeks later
2019	New Voepass brand, takeover of MAP Linhas Aéreas including slots at Congonhas
2021	Sale of MAP to GOL, later unwound
April 2023	End of the cooperation with GOL, start of the codeshare with LATAM
August 9, 2024	Crash of Flight 2283 near Vinhedo
March 11, 2025	ANAC suspends flight operations as a precaution
April 2025	Another court-supervised reorganization filing
June 24, 2025	ANAC permanently revokes the operating certificate

Partner of the big players

In the 2010s and 2020s, Voepass increasingly became a supplier to Brazil’s big airlines. With GOL there was a cooperation, and from 2019 a contract under which GOL bought capacity on Voepass flights. It ended in 2023. Right afterward, LATAM Airlines Brasil stepped into that role and sold tickets on Voepass routes from April 2023.

That fit the network: the big airlines fly jets between the metropolises, while Voepass brought passengers from smaller cities to the hubs by turboprop, for example to São Paulo-Guarulhos. From November 2024, Voepass no longer sold tickets through its own website – the network then consisted essentially of routes marketed by LATAM and a contract for employee transport for the energy group Petrobras. You will find more on the corporate environment at the LATAM Airlines Group.

The fleet: from Embraer to ATR

Over the years, the airline rebuilt its fleet completely several times. The following overview summarizes the most important types; exact numbers fluctuated strongly and are only given here where documented.

Type	Period	Spotter tip
Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia	1995–2011	Brazilian turboprop with a T-tail and low wing – the first workhorse
Airbus A310	1997–1999	Two aircraft, a short chapter and a rare archive subject
ATR 42-300	1999–2000	Two aircraft, returned to the lessors after the Brazilian currency devaluation of 1999
Embraer ERJ 145 and ERJ 135	2009–2013 (ERJ 135 only 2009–2010)	Regional jets with rear-mounted engines in Passaredo colors
ATR 72-500	until 2025	Backbone of the last years
ATR 42-500	until 2025	Smaller sister for thinner routes
ATR 72-600	2022–2025	Newer generation with a glass cockpit, returned to the lessor

Shortly before the end, according to available fleet overviews, the fleet consisted of ten ATR aircraft, two ATR 42-500s and eight ATR 72-500s. The manufacturer of all of Voepass’s late aircraft was the French-Italian company ATR.

How to recognize Voepass aircraft

Because the airline no longer flies, you will mostly encounter Voepass in photos – in your own archive, in databases or in spotter forums. These features help:

• Aircraft type: In the last years, every Voepass aircraft was an ATR – a high-wing aircraft with two turboprop engines and a T-tail.
• Titles: The fuselage reads “VOEPASS”. On pictures from before 2019, you see the Passaredo brand instead.
• Registration: Brazilian registrations, for example with PR- or PS-. The aircraft in the Flight 2283 accident wore PS-VPB, and an ATR 72-500 with the registration PR-PDW flew in a retro livery.
• Tracker data: In old recordings the ICAO code PTB appears, not “Voepass”.

How Brazilian and other registrations are structured is explained in the article Understanding aircraft registrations.

Flight 2283: the crash near Vinhedo

On August 9, 2024, Flight 2283 took off shortly before noon in Cascavel, Paraná state, bound for São Paulo-Guarulhos. On board the ATR 72-500 with the registration PS-VPB were 58 passengers and four crew members. The aircraft had been built in 2010 and had flown for Voepass since 2022.

In the early afternoon, the aircraft stalled in cruise flight and then entered a flat spin. It crashed in a residential area in Vinhedo, São Paulo state. All 62 people on board died; no one on the ground was injured. A severe icing warning was in effect for the area at the time.

What the investigation found

The Brazilian accident investigation agency CENIPA, which is part of the Air Force, published an interim report in September 2024. It showed that ice built up on the aircraft, that the crew talked about problems with the de-icing system and that the ATR lost lift.

The final report followed on July 23, 2026. It names no single cause but 19 contributing factors. According to the report, these include:

• severe icing of the airframe and failures of the de-icing system,
• actions in the cockpit that did not follow procedures,
• a high workload that could cause warnings to be lost,
• poorly documented maintenance deficiencies,
• a safety culture in the company shaped by informal processes,
• weaknesses in oversight by the authority.

The ANAC announced it would review the report’s recommendations. How icing forms and how aircraft are protected from it on the ground and in the air is explained in the article De-icing of aircraft.

Suspension and license revocation in 2025

After the crash, the aviation authority ANAC stepped up its monitoring of Voepass. In spring 2025 the situation came to a head:

That ended the story of an airline that had already survived several crises – this time without a restart. You know the pattern from other regional airlines: the US airline Colgan Air also made headlines after a serious accident and disappeared from the market a few years later, and the Mexican Aeromar with its ATRs ceased operations in 2023 after financial problems. Another Brazilian airline whose end you can trace in the archive is Avianca Brasil.

Voepass in everyday spotting

You will no longer see Voepass live. The airline remains exciting all the same, on several levels:

For archive pictures, the rule is: label photos consistently with registration, type, airline and location. Especially with an airline that had two names, that saves you a lot of searching later. The guide Archiving aircraft photos offers tips.

Common mix-ups

• Thinking Passaredo and Voepass are two airlines – it is the same company, just with a new brand name from 2019.
• Searching for “VOEPASS” on the radio – the callsign stayed “PASSAREDO”, the ICAO code PTB.
• Thinking Voepass was a LATAM subsidiary – Voepass was independent, LATAM was a codeshare partner.
• Attributing every Brazilian ATR to Voepass – Azul also flies ATRs; titles and registration decide.
• Equating the ATR 72-500 and -600 – Voepass had both, and the aircraft in the Flight 2283 accident was a -500.
• Thinking MAP Linhas Aéreas was Voepass – MAP belonged to the group only from 2019 to 2021.

Conclusion

Voepass – long known as Passaredo – was a fixture of Brazilian regional traffic for around three decades: first with Embraer aircraft, in the end exclusively with ATR turboprops as a feeder for the big airlines. The crash of Flight 2283 in August 2024 and the license revocation in June 2025 ended this story. For you as a spotter, Voepass remains an archive topic where clean data matters: registrations, the ICAO code PTB and the right name for the right time.