GoL Jetliner down in Brazil
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SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) - Brazilian airline Gol said on Friday it was trying to locate a passenger plane that disappeared from the radar and failed to arrive at its destination.
The head of Brazil's airports authority, Infraero, said the Gol plane collided with another smaller plane in the Amazon region, the Globo news agency reported.
The smaller plane, an executive jet, was able to land even though it suffered wing damage, Globo reported.
Gol flight 1907 left Manaus in the afternoon but did not arrive in Brasilia as scheduled, a spokesman for the Manaus airport said.
The company said the flight had 155 passengers on board but made no mention of crew members. Brazil's civil aviation authority said the plane was transporting 155 people.
Brazil seizes passports of US pilots tied to crash
When I worked for a Japanese airline, the pilots were warned that if they ever get into a crash, to jumpseat out of the Country on the first airplane you see....
http://yahoo.reuters.com/news/articlehy ... ews&rpc=44
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Judge Tiago de Abril in Mato Grosso state, where the plane went down, told Reuters police had seized the passports of U.S. citizens Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino on his orders for the duration of the investigation.
"That's a cautionary measure. If they returned to the United States it would require a lot of time and effort for us to collect their testimony," the judge said, adding that the investigation should not take long.
The two pilots, who were flying a newly built executive jet that authorities believe clipped the Boeing 737-800 in midair, arrived on Tuesday in Rio de Janeiro for medical and psychological tests as part of the investigation.
They face more questioning on Wednesday.
"They are being interviewed by the authorities and are giving their total cooperation with the investigation," said Glauco Paiva, a U.S. consulate official in Rio.
Brazilian ATC May Have Contributed To Mid-Air
Some many different theories, show why we need to wait for the investigation....
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Two different air controllers, one working a Brazilian Gol Airlines 737-800, the other handling an Embraer Legacy 600, evidently assigned both aircraft to the same altitude... possibly leading to what appears to be a fatal midair collision last week.
There were conflicting reports in the Brazilian media that while the Gol aircraft was cruising at 37,000 feet, that the Embraer may have been cleared to climb from FL350 to FL390, crossing the path of the airliner.
As ANN reported, the two aircraft collided Friday -- but the smaller twin-engine Embraer was able to make an emergency landing at the nearby Para military airfield. The larger 737 plummeted in a near vertical dive into the Amazon with the loss of 155 lives.
The Brazilian news agency O Globo reported an anonymous Brazilian controller admitted that the two planes were being controlled from two separate towers in the state of Para in the Amazon. Evidently, the two controllers did not communicate and both assigned the aircraft to fly at the same height.
The airspace is believed to have spotty radar coverage, according to experts quoted in the Associated Press.
Both aircraft were equipped with the latest TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) equipment and it is reported that the pilot of the Embraer claimed that he heard no alarm from the TCAS before the collision.
A business reporter for the New York Times, Joe Sharkey, was on assignment reporting on the Brazilian aircraft industry. He was aboard the Embraer and recounted in the Times, "Without warning, I felt a terrific jolt and heard a loud bang, followed by an eerie silence, save for the hum of engines."
Sharkey continued, "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."
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