Title: Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907 Content: Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907, was a passenger flight flying from Manaus to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. On 29 September 2006, the Boeing 737-800 operating this flight was involved in a midair collision with an Embraer Legacy 600 while cruising over the Amazon rainforest. The Embraer landed at a military base safely with no injuries on board, and minor damage to the left wingtip and horizontal stabilizer, but the Boeing twisted out of control was completely destroyed, killing all 154 occupants on board. == Accident == The Embraer had submitted a computer-generated flight plan to Air Traffic Control for the run north to Manaus. This was for a routing that would take N600XL over Brasília, where, after a slight left turn, airway UZ6 would lead the airplane 1,200 miles to Manaus. It passes over Caiapó Indian territory and Fazenda Jarinã. On the basis of forecasted winds and the Legacy’s performance, it requested a climb to 37,000 feet, or flight level 370, an altitude appropriate for the initial direction of flight. Until Brasília, that direction was slightly to the east side of magnetic north. Airplanes cruising on such easterly headings are usually assigned “odd” altitudes (35,000, 37,000, 39,000), while airplanes cruising on westerly headings are given “even” altitudes (36,000, 38,000, 40,000). Virtuoso air-traffic controllers sometimes allow exceptions to be made when traffic is light (and exceptions are systemic along certain one-way routes), but these cruising rules dictate the altitudes at which airplanes fly worldwide. Since the airway to Manaus required a westerly turn over Brasília, the computer proposed a descent to 36,000. The Legacy struck the Boeing about 30 feet and 2 feet to the left of the fuselage. The Legacy’s winglet acted like a knife, slicing through the Boeing’s left wing about halfway out and severing the wing’s internal spar. The outboard section of the wing whipped upward, stripping skin as it went, then separated entirely, spiraling over the fuselage and demolishing much of the Boeing’s tail. In the Boeing’s cockpit the sequence sounded like a car crash. Instantly, the Boeing twisted out of control, corkscrewing violently to the left and pitching straight down into a rotating vertical dive. The cockpit filled with alarms, Bank angle! Bank angle! Bank angle! The pilots fight desperately to regain control as the altitude chord sounded for one and a half seconds. Ten seconds into the dive, one of them cried “Aye!,” but the other urged him to stay calm. “Calma!” he said, and seconds later he said it again. They extended the landing gear to slow the dive. 22 seconds into the plunge, the airplane’s over-speed clacker came on and continued to the end of the flight. Forces inside the airplane rapidly grew, with loud winds sounding over the cockpit voice recorder until, 30 seconds into the dive, they exceeded four Gs—the gravity-load threshold beyond which some passengers must have began to black out. The pilots kept trying to fly, struggling with the controls and exchanging a few words which are impossible to discern over the plethora of alarms. 45 seconds into the dive came another “Aye!” Seven seconds later, the Boeing broke into three parts, which plummeted into the forest below. Passenger remains were found to be several inches deep in the dirt as a result of the impact forces.  Category:Aviation disasters in the 2000s Category:2000s in Brazil Category:2006 Category:September events