Ask the pilot

Death and survival in the skies over Brazil and England: Two New York columnists show us the ups and downs of air disasters.

By Patrick Smith

Read more: Technology & Business, Business, P. Smith, Ask the Pilot

Oct. 6, 2006 | The biggest aviation news stories of the past several days take us on a journey from Brazil to England, with stops along the way at two of the world's most influential newspapers.

We begin in Brazil with the crash of a Boeing 737. Shortly before 5 p.m. local time on Sept. 29, Gol airlines Flight 1907, bound from the port city of Manaus to the capital, Brasilia, with 155 people on board, collided in midflight with a smaller executive jet carrying seven crew and passengers. The smaller plane, damaged in the left wing and horizontal stabilizer, remained flyable and made an emergency landing at an air force base. The 737, apparently rendered uncontrollable, plunged into the Amazon jungle -- in a region so inaccessible that indigenous Kayopo Capoto-Jarina Indians used machetes to help emergency crews reach the scene. There were no survivors, making it the worst-ever crash in Brazilian aviation history.

Both aircraft were effectively brand new. The Boeing, a 737-800, had been delivered to the airline on Sept. 12. (Registered PR-GTD, it can be seen here fresh from the assembly line.) The executive jet was a Legacy 600, a derivative of the popular ERJ-145 regional jet manufactured by Brazilian aerospace giant Embraer. The plane was on its delivery flight to ExcelAire, a private aviation firm based at MacArthur Airport outside New York City.

All seven occupants were Americans, including New York Times "On the Road" travel columnist Joe Sharkey, who was researching a story. For me, coming across Sharkey's name in the newspaper was one of those spit-out-your-coffee moments, for Joe happens to be an avowed reader of this column. He and I have shared occasional correspondence. (Several months ago he was nice enough to contribute a complimentary blurb to my home page.)

"We were flying at 37,000 over the Amazon," Sharkey tells "Ask the Pilot." "Nobody saw the 737. One pilot and one passenger saw only a fast-moving shadow. "We were headed straight, minding our own business, when bang!"

At that point, four feet of the Legacy's left winglet was sheared away, along with several inches of the horizontal stabilizer. Winglets are the upturned tips affixed to the airfoils of many modern aircraft. They increase efficiency and enhance aerodynamic performance by smoothing the mix of high- and low-pressure air at a wing's outermost extremity. Horizontal stabilizer refers to the aft set of wings mounted on or near a plane's tail. Winglets are expendable -- if you're going to lose something, have it be a winglet (or maybe an engine, provided it doesn't slam into something on the way off). But aircraft quickly lose their flyability when stabilizers are banged up. Had a larger portion been lost, or had the elevator -- the stabilizer's hinged portion, used to control a plane's up and down pitch -- been impacted or jammed, chances of survival would have been substantially reduced.

It might seem counterintuitive that the much larger and heavier 737 was fatally impacted while the smaller Embraer survived. But it's not about weight, size or even speed, necessarily. What matters is where, exactly, the damage occurs, and to what extent. Nobody yet knows where the 737 was struck. The Legacy's winglet may have cut away a stabilizer, or a critical portion of the wing.

According to Sharkey, loosened skin panels of the left wing began to separate during the half-hour descent that followed. "We remained stable throughout, but because of the wing deterioration the crew considered ditching before we reached that air force base. They brought us down hot, in a wide spiral to minimize stress on the left wing. We were flying over dense, dense Amazon jungle. The sun was low to our left. The forest canopy was dark."

Next page: For one party to emerge unscathed from a midair collision is definitely the exception