October 3, 2006
On the Road
Colliding With Death at 37,000 Feet, and Living
By JOE SHARKEY
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. (snip)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/business/03road.html?hp&ex=1159934400&en=e400a2a6d73b9dca&ei=5094&partner=homepage
I found one report, some place today, said the two planes did hit each other.
Still it is so very odd and sadd, all that open sky and for some reason 2 planes hit each other.