Eyewitness Account of Mid-Air Collision

[Dan Gould]

From the New York Times' Joe Sharkey:

Colliding With Death at 37,000 Feet, and Living

By JOE SHARKEY

Published: October 3, 2006

SÃO JOSE DOS CAMPOS, Brazil, Oct. 1 — It had been an uneventful, comfortable flight.

With the window shade drawn, I was relaxing in my leather seat aboard a $25 million corporate jet that was flying 37,000 feet above the vast Amazon rainforest. The 7 of us on board the 13-passenger jet were keeping to ourselves.

Without warning, I felt a terrific jolt and heard a loud bang, followed by an eerie silence, save for the hum of the engines.

And then the three words I will never forget. “We’ve been hit,” said Henry Yandle, a fellow passenger standing in the aisle near the cockpit of the Embraer Legacy 600 jet.

“Hit? By what?” I wondered. I lifted the shade. The sky was clear; the sun low in the sky. The rainforest went on forever. But there, at the end of the wing, was a jagged ridge, perhaps a foot high, where the five-foot-tall winglet was supposed to be.

And so began the most harrowing 30 minutes of my life. I would be told time and again in the next few days that nobody ever survives a midair collision. I was lucky to be alive — and only later would I learn that the 155 people aboard the Boeing 737 on a domestic flight that seems to have clipped us were not.

Investigators are still trying to sort out what happened, and how — our smaller jet managed to stay aloft while a 737 that is longer, wider and more than three times as heavy, fell from the sky nose first.

But at 3:59 last Friday afternoon, all I could see, all I knew, was that part of the wing was gone. And it was clear that the situation was worsening in a hurry. The leading edge of the wing was losing rivets, and starting to peel back.

Amazingly, no one panicked. The pilots calmly starting scanning their controls and maps for signs of a nearby airport, or, out their window, a place to come down.

But as the minutes passed, the plane kept losing speed. By now we all knew how bad this was. I wondered how badly ditching — an optimistic term for crashing — was going to hurt.

I thought of my family. There was no point reaching for my cellphone to try a call — there was no signal. And as our hopes sank with the sun, some of us jotted notes to spouses and loved ones and placed them in our wallets, hoping the notes would later be found.

I was focused on a different set of notes when the flight began. I’ve contributed the “On the Road”column for The New York Times business-travel section every week for the last seven years. But I was on the Embraer 600 for a freelance assignment for Business Jet Traveler magazine.

My fellow passengers included executives from Embraer and a charter company called ExcelAire, the new owner of the jet. David Rimmer, the senior vice president of Excel Aire, had invited me to ride home on the jet his company had just taken possession of at Embraer’s headquarters here.

And it had been a nice ride. Minutes before we were hit, I had wandered up to the cockpit to chat with the pilots, who said the plane was flying beautifully. I saw the readout that showed our altitude: 37,000 feet.

I returned to my seat. Minutes later came the strike (it sheared off part of the plane’s tail, too, we later learned).

Immediately afterward, there wasn’t much conversation.

Mr. Rimmer, a large man, was hunched in the aisle in front of me staring out the window at the newly damaged wing.

“How bad is it?” I asked.

He fixed me with a steady look and said, "I don’t know."

I saw the body language of the two pilots. They were like infantrymen working together in a jam, just as they had been trained to do.

For the next 25 minutes, the pilots, Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino, were scanning their instruments, looking for an airport. Nothing turned up.

They sent out a Mayday signal, which was acknowledged by a cargo plane somewhere in the region. There had been no contact with any other plane, and certainly not with a 737 in the same airspace.

Mr. Lepore then spotted a runway through the darkening canopy of trees.

“I can see an airport,” he said.

They tried to contact the control tower at what turned out to be a military base hidden deep in the Amazon. They steered the plane through a big wide sweep to avoid putting too much stress on the wing.

As they approached the runway, they had the first contact with air traffic control.

“We didn’t know how much runway we had or what was on it,” Mr. Paladino would say later that night at the base in the jungle at Cachimbo.

We came down hard and fast. I watched the pilots wrestle the aircraft because so many of their automatic controls were blown. They brought us to a halt with plenty of runway left. We staggered to the exit.

“Nice flying,” I told the pilots as I passed them. Actually, I inserted an unprintable word between “nice” and “flying.”

“Any time,” Mr. Paladino, said with an anxious smile.

Later that night they gave us cold beer and food at the military base. We speculated endlessly about what had caused the impact. A wayward weather balloon? A hot-dogging military fighter jet whose pilot had bailed? An airliner somewhere nearby that had blown up, and rained debris on us?

Whatever the cause, it had become clear that we had been involved in an actual midair crash that none of us should have survived.

In a moment of gallows humor at the dormlike barracks where we were to sleep, I said, “Maybe we are all actually dead, and this is hell — reliving college bull sessions with a can of beer for eternity.”

About 7.30 p.m. Dan Bachmann, an Embraer executive and the only one among us who spoke Portuguese, came to the table in the mess hall with news from the commander’s office. A Boeing 737 with 155 people on board was reported missing right where we had been hit.

Before that moment, we had all been bonding, joking about our close call. We were the Amazon Seven, living now on precious time that no longer belonged to us but somehow we had acquired. We would have a reunion each year and report on how we used our time.

Instead we now bowed our heads in a long moment of silence, with the sound of muffled tears.

Both pilots, experienced corporate jet pilots, were shaken by the ordeal. “If anybody should have gone down it should have been us,” Mr. Lepore, 42, of Bay Shore, N.Y., kept saying.

Mr. Paladino, 34, of Westhampton, N.Y., was barely able to speak. “I’m just trying to settle in with the loss of all those people. It is really starting to hurt,” he said.

Mr. Yandle told them: “You guys are heroes. You saved our lives.” They smiled wanly. It was clear the weight of all this would remain with them forever.

The next day, the base was swarming with Brazilian authorities investigating the accident and directing search operations for the downed 737, which an officer told me lay in an area less than 100 miles south of us that could be reached only by whacking away by hand at dense jungle.

We also got access to our plane, which was being pored over by inspectors. Ralph Michielli, vice president for maintenance at ExcelAire and a fellow passenger on the flight, took me up on a lift to see the damage to the wing near the sheared-off winglet.

A panel near the leading edge of the wing had separated by a foot or more. Dark stains closer to the fuselage showed that fuel had leaked out. Parts of the horizontal stabilizer on the tail had been smashed, and a small chunk was missing off the left elevator.

A Brazilian military inspector standing by surprised me by his willingness to talk, although the conversation was limited by his weak English and my nonexistent Portuguese.

He was speculating on what happened, but this is what he said: Both planes were, inexplicably, at the same altitude in the same space in the sky. The southeast-bound 737 pilots spotted our Legacy 600, which was flying northwest to Manaus, and made a frantic evasive bank. The 737 wing, swooping into the space between our wing and the high tail, clipped us twice, and the bigger plane then went into its death spiral.

It sounded like an impossible situation, the inspector acknowledged. “But I think this happened,” he said. Though no one can say for certain yet how the accident occurred, three other Brazilian officers told me they had been informed that both planes were at the same altitude.

Why did I — the closest passenger to the impact — hear no sound, no roar of a big 737?

I asked Jeirgem Prust, a test pilot for Embraer. This was the following day, when we had been transferred from the base by military aircraft to a police headquarters in Cuiaba. That’s where authorities had laid claim to jurisdiction and where the pilots and passengers of the Legacy 600, including me, would be questioned until dawn by an intense police commander and his translators.

Mr. Prust took out a calculator and tapped away, figuring the time that would be available to hear the roar of a jet coming at another jet, each flying at over 500 miles an hour in opposite directions. He showed me the numbers. “It’s far less than a split second,” he said. We both looked at the pilots slouched on couches across the room.

“These guys and that plane saved our lives,” I said.

“By my calculations,” he agreed.

I later thought that perhaps the pilot of the Brazilian airliner had also saved our lives because of his quick reactions. If only his own passengers could say the same.

At the police headquarters, we were required to write on a sheet of paper our names, addresses, birthdates, occupations and levels of education, plus the names of our parents. We were all also required to submit to an examination by a physician with long hair who wore a white gown that draped almost to his shins. We were required to strip to the waists for photographs front and back.

This, explained the physician, whose name I did not get but who described himself to me as a “forensic doctor,” was to prove that we had not been tortured “in any way.”

Again gallows humor rose despite our attempts to discourage it.

“This guy’s the coroner,” Mr. Yandle explained later, and then added, “I think that means we are actually dead.”

But laughs, such as they were, died out by now as we thought again and again of the bodies still unclaimed in the jungle, and how their lives and ours had intersected, literally and metaphorically, for one horrible split second.

The surviving aircraft:

Truly amazing that a huge airliner could do this damage to a small jet that was still able to fly and yet the jet fell out of the sky. How could the small jet look like this but the big jet became unflyable?

[Noj]

One has to wonder whether there was something already wrong with the larger aircraft that crashed, whether it was already in distress which caused the collision. Amazing story regardless.

[Claude]

One has to wonder whether there was something already wrong with the larger aircraft that crashed, whether it was already in distress which caused the collision. Amazing story regardless.

According to the first results of the enquiry, both planes flew on the same altitude because of an air traffic control error.

[Dan Gould]

One has to wonder whether there was something already wrong with the larger aircraft that crashed, whether it was already in distress which caused the collision. Amazing story regardless.

According to the first results of the enquiry, both planes flew on the same altitude because of an air traffic control error.

And each flying at 500 MPH in opposite directions, there wasn't a lot of time to react. What I wonder is why ATC never picked up on the error. How long were they both flying at 37,000 feet?

[Chalupa]

One has to wonder whether there was something already wrong with the larger aircraft that crashed, whether it was already in distress which caused the collision. Amazing story regardless.

According to the first results of the enquiry, both planes flew on the same altitude because of an air traffic control error.

And each flying at 500 MPH in opposite directions, there wasn't a lot of time to react. What I wonder is why ATC never picked up on the error. How long were they both flying at 37,000 feet?

Have you ever flown on a Brazilian air line??? My experiences(both of them) were pretty hairy. Not surprised that this happened - I'm only surprised it didn't happen before now.

[bluesbro]

Those pilots deserve a nice bonus this year.

[Dan Gould]

Those pilots deserve a nice bonus this year.

Yeah, but what they've got right now is having their passports seized to prevent them from leaving the country before investigators say they can.

[Claude]

Those pilots deserve a nice bonus this year.

Yeah, but what they've got right now is having their passports seized to prevent them from leaving the country before investigators say they can.

Isn't that normal for an investigation into an accident causing 150 deaths? You don't simply let the pilots involved leave the country. Although it doesn't look like they are responsible for causing the crash, it cannot be excluded until the investigation has reached a more advanced point.

I don't think US authorities would let them go either (if the situation was reversed).

Edited October 3, 2006 by Claude

[Dan Gould]

Those pilots deserve a nice bonus this year.

Yeah, but what they've got right now is having their passports seized to prevent them from leaving the country before investigators say they can.

Isn't that normal for an investigation into an accident causing 150 deaths? You don't simply let the pilots involved leave the country. Although it doesn't look like they are responsible for causing the crash, it cannot be excluded until the investigation has reached a more advanced point.

I don't think US authorities would let them go either (if the situation was reversed).

Claude, I've never heard of such a thing. But then again, in these circumstances, you don't often have living beings to hold pending an investigation. According to the NYT article, under Brazilian law, prosecutors are responsible for investigating accidental deaths as well as crimes. That's not the case in the US, and the NTSB would have no authority to seize passports once it was clear that no crime took place. So no, I don't think US authorities would hold them.

[mgraham333]

U.S. Pilots in Amazon Crash Might Face Manslaughter Charges in Brazil

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — The American pilots of an executive jet could be charged with manslaughter if they are considered responsible for a high-altitude crash with a Boeing-737-800 that killed 155 people, federal police said Wednesday.

Police earlier seized the passports of pilots Joseph Lepore and Jan Paladino to prevent them from leaving the country.

Lepore and were piloting the Brazilian-made Legacy 600 when it struck a Boeing 737-800 over Mato Grosso state in the Amazon rain forest. The Boeing crashed, killing all 155 aboard. The Legacy landed safely at an air force base.

"We have received an order from the Federal Prosecutor's Office in Mato Grosso to begin investigating the possible commission of a crime inside the aircraft. The investigation begins today," said Geraldo Pereira, acting director of the Federal Police in Mato Grosso, speaking by phone.

"We will start investigating if the two pilots caused the accident and if they are proven guilty they could be charged with involuntary manslaughter," Pereira said.

Investigators are puzzled why the pilots weren't alerted by equipment designed to avoid collisions. The air force said both jets were equipped with a Traffic Collision Avoidance System, or TCAS, which monitors other planes and sets off an alarm if they get too close.

"Preliminary investigations indicate that the pilots may have turned off the transponder" that communicates the plane's location, he said. "They knew the risks they were running and nevertheless they took certain attitudes that endangered the lives of people."

Source

A new plane, the owner and high-level exces of the manufacturer on board....let's just hope that no one was "showing off." It shouldn't be too difficult to determine if there was a flight data recorder on the Embraer jet.

[Dan Gould]

Flight data and cockpit recorders were taken from the executive jet. Its still unclear what was recovered from the tail of the 737.

I'd like to see clear evidence if they are charged. I don't think any professional pilot is foolish enough to turn off collision avoidance equipment, nor do they just decide to ignore the clearance they've received and choose to fly at a different altitude just cause they want to.

[chris olivarez]

The lucky seven. Very lucky.

[mgraham333]

Flight data and cockpit recorders were taken from the executive jet. Its still unclear what was recovered from the tail of the 737.

I'd like to see clear evidence if they are charged. I don't think any professional pilot is foolish enough to turn off collision avoidance equipment, nor do they just decide to ignore the clearance they've received and choose to fly at a different altitude just cause they want to.

I've tried to Google it, but cannot find it (maybe someone can). I seem to recall a news story a while back about a couple of commercial piolts who were transporting a commerical aircraft (no passengers on board) and they decided to see how high they could take it. There was a problem - can't remember if there was a crash - the airline suspended (and maybe ultimately terminated) the two.

If I am remembering a true story... the point I was trying to make is that if it can enter the mind of a commercial pilot it can enter the mind of a private pilot.

[mgraham333]

Found it!! here

Had to use the right lingo... they're are called "repositioning flights" when the airline is moving a plane from one airport to another without passengers.

It happened on October 14, 2004 near the Jefferson City Regional Airport (NTSB report) it was a couple of Pinnacle Airlines pilots that were trying to "join the 410 Club" as in fly at 41,000 feet.

The stunt resulted in a dual engine flameout and the plane crashed into a residential area. No passengers on board. No injuries on the ground. The two crew members were fatally injured.

[Dan Gould]

One big problem with the application of that story to this situation:

The dumb ass 'bored' pilots asked for and received clearance to deviate from their assigned flight level:

The crew's request for an excursion into the wild blue yonder aroused the

curiosity of a Kansas City Air Route Traffic Control Center controller.

"I've never seen you guys up at [410]," she said, before clearing the crew

to

climb.

[mgraham333]

One big problem with the application of that story to this situation:

The dumb ass 'bored' pilots asked for and received clearance to deviate from their assigned flight level:

I was surprised to see that as well. The story goes on to mention that 41,000 was technically within limits so there was no prohibition to issuing the clearance.

However, the Pinnacel story does apply here. First, it was mostly to address the comment that, "I don't think any professional pilot is foolish enough..." Second, most incidents, whether they are mid-air collisions or dual engine flameouts, do not occur unless there is some break-down somewhere. So far it does not appear to be a technological breakdown in the case of the mid-air collision. In the article I posted it said, "Preliminary investigations indicate that the pilots may have turned off the transponder."

My original comment was "let's just hope that no one was "showing off." I'm not ready to convict these guys yet. They are either heroes, hotshots, or something in between. I'll wait and let the investigators decide.

[David Ayers]

For more speculation, see here - if you have the energy.

[Dan Gould]

For more speculation, see here - if you have the energy.

Thanks for that link, David. While there's a lot of speculation, it also contains a lot more info than has otherwise been disseminated publicly. The facts appear to be:

Odd Flight Levels (like 370 or 37000 feet) are reserved for eastbound traffic like the 737. The executive jet was flying at FL370 instead of 360.

The executive jet may have had no transponder signal and ignored communications from ATC; however this occured in an area known to have communication "black spots" which makes a mess of any assumptions about intent.

It seems to me though that even if the pilots had willfully turned off their transponder and ignored radio communications, ATC should have had no problem recognizing the conflict and giving the 737 a command to avoid the collision. Think of what happened when the jet carrying Payne Stewart (?) flew on autopilot with everyone unconscious or dead. ATC couldn't raise the plane but moved everyone out of their way while the military jets were scrambled to investigate. There's absolutely no excuse, in my mind, for not giving the 737 the proper instruction, if in fact you can't raise the smaller jet.

[Dan Gould]

Looks like those American pilots being held in Brazil may be exonerated:

Flight Recorder Is Said to Back American Pilots in Brazil Crash

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov. 2 (AP) — The flight recorder transcript from the executive jet involved in Brazil’s worst air disaster shows that its American pilots were told by air traffic control to fly at the same altitude as a Boeing 737 before the planes apparently collided over the Amazon rain forest, a newspaper reported Thursday.

One of the pilots, Joseph Lepore, 42, of Bay Shore, N.Y., was told by the tower in São José dos Campos to maintain an altitude of 37,000 feet as he flew the jet on Sept. 29 beyond Brasília, the capital, on a northwest path to Manaus, the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo quoted the transcript as saying.

That altitude contradicted the pilots’ filed flight plan as well as established norms, which reserve odd-numbered altitudes for southbound flights.

The lawyer representing the pilots, Roberto A. Torricella Jr., who is based in Miami, said last Friday that his clients were at their assigned altitude, despite a flight plan that specified a different altitude.

The Defense Ministry was not immediately able to confirm the report in the newspaper on Thursday, said a spokeswoman, Flavia de Oliveira. She said it would not have more information until air force officials return Monday from Canada, where black boxes from both planes were sent for analysis.

Folha, Brazil’s largest-circulation daily, did not say how it obtained the transcript. The air force, which oversees Brazil’s air traffic controllers, has not released it to the Brazilian federal police or to National Transportation Safety Board investigators.

After it apparently clipped the Embraer Legacy 600 executive jet, the larger plane, Gol Airlines Flight 1907, a Boeing 737, crashed into the Amazon jungle. All 154 people on board the larger plane were killed.

The Legacy’s pilots — employees of ExcelAire Service Inc. of Ronkonkoma, N.Y. — were flying the Brazilian-made jet on its maiden voyage back to New York, and managed to land the badly damaged jet safely. They have been ordered to stay in Brazil during the investigation. The second pilot is Jan Paladino, 34, of Westhampton, N.Y.

Mr. Torricella said Thursday that the Folha report supported the pilots’ testimony to investigators.

“As we’ve maintained from the beginning, the pilots were cleared to Manaus for flight at three-seven-zero at the time of departure, and we’re confident that anyone that is able to hear the tower tapes or see a transcript of the instructions issued by the São José tower will hear the exact same thing,” he said.

The tower instructions may have been the first of a series of problems that led to the crash. As the Legacy approached Brasília, the plane lost radio contact with the control tower. The Legacy’s transponder, which signals the plane’s location to the tower and other airplanes, also stopped working.

Just what caused the failures remains unclear, but from that point on, both the pilots and the air traffic controllers lacked critical information. Controllers had no way of knowing the smaller plane’s altitude.

Brazilian officials have insisted the Legacy should have returned to its original flight plan after losing contact with the control tower.

That plan would have mostly kept the smaller jet at 36,000 feet after Brasília, and out of the path of the 737, which was flying at its customary altitude of 37,000 feet.

Instead, both planes remained on a collision course.

But aviation experts say orders from air traffic controllers always take precedence over flight plans.

[Rooster_Ties]

American pilots charged in Amazon jetliner crash

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) -- Brazilian federal police on Friday charged two New York pilots involved in a collision that killed 154 people with exposing an aircraft to danger.

The charges could carry a penalty of 12 years in prison.

Joseph Lepore, 42, of Bay Shore, and Jan Paladino, 34, Westhampton Beach, were questioned by police for six hours and then were allowed to pick up their passports and leave the country, but they are required to return for their trial.

The two pilots told police they would reply in court, and did not speak to media after questioning.

Police had seized their passports after the September 29 crash to prevent them from leaving the country, and they had been staying in a hotel on Rio's Copacabana Beach. But a Brazilian court released their passports this week, saying there were no legal grounds for restricting their movements.

Lepore and Paladino were piloting a Brazilian-made Legacy executive jet when it collided with a Gol Airlines Boeing 737-800 heading south over the Amazon jungle. All 154 people aboard the Gol flight were killed, while the Legacy landed safely with all seven people aboard unharmed.

The Legacy, owned by ExcelAire of Ronkonkoma, New York, was heading northwest on its maiden voyage from the southern city of Sao Jose dos Campos to the United States when the accident occurred at an altitude of 37,000 feet, usually reserved for flights headed in the opposite direction.

Transcripts suggest the Legacy had been authorized by the tower in Sao Jose dos Campos to fly at 37,000 feet to Manaus, although that contradicted the plane's original flight plan.

Warning systems failed on both planes before they collided, an air force investigator said last month.

Air traffic controllers believed the Legacy was flying at 36,000 feet at the time it collided with Gol Flight 1907, Brig. Gen. Luiz Carlos da Silva Bueno recently told a Senate committee.

But "at departure, air traffic control cleared the Legacy to Manaus at 37,000 feet," ExcelAire lawyer Robert Torricella said at the time. "Absent a contrary clearance by air traffic control, the Legacy was required to remain at that altitude."

The lawyer for the pilots, former Justice Minister Jose Carlos Dias, said the pilots picked up their passports and were taken to Guarulhos airport for a charter flight to the United States.

Dias called the police decision "biased" and "discriminatory," and said police were simply "looking for someone to blame for the crime." He added that if the factors leading to the fatal collision were considered unintentional, the maximum penalty would fall to four years in prison.

[Scott Dolan]

And here I thought they had cleared these guys month or so back? This story just keeps getting more and more bizarre.

Lots of really weird questions concerning this one. Not the least of which being how the hell did TWO warning systems fail?