Brazil - Colliding With Death at 37,000 Feet, and Living (NYTimes reporter aboard Embraer)

The New York Times (excerpt) ^ | October 3, 2006 | Joe Sharkey

[HAL9000]

Excerpt -

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.

~ snip ~

[leadpenny]

TCAS should have caught this one.

[DB]

It all depends on what got hit/damaged on the 737.

[Eastbound]

Thanks. I'm not up on these things, so I checked it out here.

[Eastbound]

Meant to ping you.

[leadpenny]

A giant leap in aviation safety.

[Bittersweetmd]

ping

[leadpenny]

We may never know but some possibilities:

Severed control cables and or damaged control surfaces.
Rapid decompression.
Unrecoverable attitude after attempted evasive maneuver.
Combination of all of the above.

[DB]

It could have even been the cockpit that ate the wing tip.

[leadpenny]

Yup.

[Habibi]

"It's possible that the evasive maneuver was forced before the autopilot could be turned off. If so, then it is possible that the autopilot fought with the human pilot...potentially fatal."

Nah. The 737 autopilot disengages automatically, even if the disengage button is not depressed. Handy feature, that one.

As to "been there, done that...lived to tell about it.", even if you think you can prove that I did those things..............

"I didn't do it. Nobody saw me do it. You can't prove anything!"

-Bart Simpson

[Nailbiter]

ping #13 and #17

[Ready4Freddy]

Article said that he was doing a freelance assignment for Business Jet Traveler magazine. Not quite sure what his arrangement w/ NYT is, he's published weekly w/ them for the last 7 years.

Can you image his call to his editor on this one - "Wait'll you hear what I'm writing about this week..."

BTW, this article is first-rate journalism. And the NYTimes has this guy freelance writing for the Travel section???

[Ready4Freddy]

So what are the rules as far as altitude go? I thought they assigned you an altitude and you stayed at it +-500ft? But the Deutsche Presse-Agentur article here says that the Embraer was assigned a 4,000' window?

[InvisibleChurch]

the nyt? is this story accurate?

[mewzilla]

the nyt? is this story accurate?

Trust but verify. I wonder what the FDR and CVR will have to say.

[Ditter]

What a story! One of the scariest moments of my life I was on a Continental flight that had just taken off when the pilot did an evasive maneuver and jerked the plane up and to the left. For a split second out my window I saw a small private plane as the pilot jerked it down and to the right. We were close enough that I saw the pilot of the small planes face.

[aculeus]

Great read bump.

[BillM]

Apparently one aircraft was assigned a block altitude. That entire block was thus reserved. The controller who gave an altitude inside this block to opposing traffic caused this crash!

[Kitten Festival]

One heck of a story

[rabidralph]

"IMPACT. IMPACT. IMPACT. EVADE. EVADE. EVADE."