Sao Paulo State Governor Jose Serra said none of the 176 people aboard Tam Airlines ill-fated Flight 3054 could have survived the crash, with temperatures in the blaze reaching 1,000 degrees centigrade.

Rescuers spoke of some 25 further fatalities on the ground.

Tam, Brazil's largest airline, said the Airbus 320 careened off the runway after landing in driving rain, skidded across a crowded avenue, slammed into the company's three-storey offices and exploded in flames.

"The plane accelerated when it reached the end of the runway and tried to take off again to avoid the avenue, but it crashed into the building and exploded," salesman Junior Matos told AFP after witnessing the disaster.

The flight from the southern city of Porto Alegre was landing at Sao Paulo's Congonhas airport.

The airport -- the busiest in Brazil -- is notorious for its short and often slippery runway, and its proximity to the nearby city center.

Early yesterday, 56 bodies had been retrieved from the burning site, while another two people died after being taken to hospital.

Sixteen of the confirmed fatalities were on the ground when the plane crashed into the office building.

"There's 200 killed over there," Manuel Antonio da Silva Araujo, a colonel in Sao Paulo's fire department said, according to the online edition of the Folha de Sao Paulo daily.

"I saw about 25 charred bodies around the plane, and a dead couple inside a car," said Douglas Ferrari, a doctor who helped firefighters in their rescue efforts.

"It was horrible," he told AFP, adding that many people had jumped out of the windows of the low-rise office building.

The avenue across which the plane skidded was "packed with people" at the time, a street vendor said.

Only the tail end of the aircraft remained visible from outside the building.

Congonhas airport was closed to air traffic and flights were diverted to other airports serving the Sao Paulo area.

A day before the accident, another plane skidded off the same main runway.