Midair over the Amazon

September 29, 2006 was a sad and unfortunate day in aviation history. Although midair collisions are rare in aircraft accidents, they do happen. This story took place in the Brazil in the Amazon. It involved an Embrear Legacy 600 Business Jet and a Boeing 737 operated by GOL airlines. The accident causes were contributed by many factors. Although it is easier to point fingers and blame one side, it is better to research and find out everything that happened that day to piece together who, what, why, where, and when so we can get the real story and find out what to change in the future; a system or procedure. Let’s see what we can find out about this disaster.

The first contributing factor was definitely the inability of the Brazilian ATC to respond to the pilots in the Embrear Legacy making their transmissions while in flight. The crew tried calling 12 times on different radio frequencies. Finally, one transmission came through. Unfortunately, the transmission read back to the pilots was unreadable. The accident happened shortly after this. The Legacy’s winglet had sliced through the 737’s left wing which caused the Legacy to be unstable but controllable. The pilots onboard managed to get the plane under control and landed safely at a nearby military base. The 737 wasn’t so lucky. It spun out of control, breaking apart and crashing into the dense Amazon forest, killing all 154 passengers and crew members onboard. (www.youtube.com, phantom strike)

After the accident occurred many factors arose and many questions were answered. The first piece of evidence that the investigators were curious about was the flight data recorders (FDR) and cockpit voice recorders (CVR). So the investigators first turned to the 737 FDR, which first showed its altitude and route. It displayed that it was on course and level at its assigned attitude. Soon after seeing this, the plane started to descend rapidly and spun out of control hitting the ground. In the ATC data, there is no sign of the GOL flight on radar. (www.youtube.com, phantom strike) Radar did show that the Legacy’s altitude had been changing consistently. The investigators interrogated the Legacy pilots asking if they had been changing altitudes. They replied, no. Later on in this report a system failure will explain why the radar displayed this. The Legacy’s FDR showed that the pilots were telling the truth, and the plane was level at flight level 370 (FL370). (www.youtube.com, phantom strike)

As more investigating went on they discover some shocking news. Both planes were on a collision course towards each other at the same altitude. How does this happen? The Legacy was supposed to be flying north to Manaus and the 737 was flying south from Manaus. When looking at the flight plan of the Legacy, it displayed that it was supposed to be flying at a different altitude, 1,000 feet lower than the 737. Initially, it was supposed to be flying at FL370 to