USA/ BRAZIL : New York Times aviation describes surviving the mid-air collision which downed an airliner in the Brazilian jungle

An aviation reporter for The New York Times said he began writing a farewell letter to his wife when the plane he was travelling in collided with a Brazilian passenger plane over the Amazon jungle. The brand-new Boeing 737-800 belonging to low-cost airline Gol crashed in the jungle, killing all 155 people, 149 passengers and six crew, but the executive jet with a media party on board made an emergency landing with no casualties. Joe Sharkey was part of the media contingent invited for a test flight on board the executive jet, a Legacy 600 made by Embraer and owned by Excel Airways which landed at Cachimbo airforce base with its five passengers plus the crew. "I thought I'll write a note to my wife and say farewell and I love you. And put it in my wallet, figuring maybe they'd find that," said Sharkey. "There's a device that shows if there's a nearby airport that flashed an obscure code and it turned out to be a once-secret and now obscure air base and we came in hot. These guys were bringing this thing in like a racecar. It was an act of physical struggle to get this aircraft under control. We got out of the plane and looked back and were shocked to see that there was damage to the tail." President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has decreed three days of national mourning for the victims of the disaster. Search planes spotted the crash site in Mato Grosso state, about 600 miles (1,000 km) northwest of Brasilia on Saturday. The plane was flying from the principal Amazon city of Manaus to the capital Brasilia.

ITN Source | October 5, 2006

Tags:. .spotted. .wife. .joe. .came. .note