150 plane passengers feared lost in Amazon

The Brazilian air force continued searching this morning in the densely forested Amazon region for a Gol airlines jet with 155 people aboard that went missing yesterday, Brazilian aviation authorities said.

But authorities said they were no longer certain the disappearance was caused by a collision with a private jet as they earlier maintained.

“During the afternoon there was another incident with a Legacy airplane, made by Embraer,” federal aviation authorities said in a statement issued early this morning.

“It is impossible to confirm that there is a relation between the incident which caused the (Legacy) crew to perform an emergency landing in Cachimbo and the disappearance of the Gol airplane.”

Brazilian airport authority Infraero president Jose Carlos Pereira said Gol flight 1907 left the jungle city of Manaus and disappeared. It had been scheduled to land in Brasilia before heading to Rio de Janeiro’s Antonio Jobim International Airport.

Manaus is a major river city in the heart of the Amazon rainforest some 2,700 kilometres (1,700 miles) northwest of Rio de Janeiro.

Pereira said five air force planes were searching for the missing Boeing 737 in a densely forested region and would continue to search through the night.

Late Friday evening Gol said in a statement that there were 155 people aboard the jet – 149 passengers and six crew members.

Initially, authorities reported the Gol jet struck a Brazilian-made Legacy aircraft near the Serra do Cachimbo region in Para state. The Legacy plane was able to land at the Cachimbo base in southern Para despite suffering damage.

The Embraer Legacy 600 is a Brazilian-made executive jet that carries up to 16 passengers.

The Estado news agency quoted Col. Ramon Bueno, head of regional flight protection in Sao Paulo, as saying Legacy was piloted by a US citizen, who had left from the airport in Sao Jose dos Campos, near Sao Paulo. The Legacy suffered damaged to its wing and tail.

He told the news agency a mid-air collision was “inexplicable".

“The two planes are very modern and have anti-collision systems, which sound an alarm to alert the plane to any obstacle,” Buena told Estado.

The Brazilian Aviation agency said in a statement the plane disappeared about 205 kilometres south of the city of Cachimbo in the remote south western region of Para state, some 2,000 kilometres northwest of Rio de Janeiro.

Yesterday evening, Gol issued a brief statement confirming the plane’s disappearance.

“GOL informs that flight 1907, that today left the Manaus airport at 15:35 (Brasilia time) this Friday, and was scheduled to arrive at the Brasilia airport at 18:12, has not had its landing confirmed. ... We are awaiting information from officials of the aviation authorities about the flight,” the statement read.

Some 70 family members and friends of the victims had been moved to a warehouse owned by Gol at the Brasilia airport to await news.

Sergio Misaci, 47, said his brother Lazaro, 58, was aboard the flight from Manaus and was travelling to Brasilia to celebrate their mother’s 80th birthday.

“I have all the hope in the world. We have to root for them and have faith in God,” Misaci said. He added that he had lived in Manaus for six years and was sure they wouldn’t find the plane for at least 24 hours.

“The trees there are 50 and 60 meters (yards) high and you can’t see anything,” he said.

Seven passengers were scheduled to disembark in Rio de Janeiro, where airport officials had put those waiting for the passengers in a separate room, said Wilson Fadul, a spokesman for the national airport authority.

The flight between Manaus and Rio is popular with foreign tourists but there was no immediate word on the nationalities of those aboard.

The Gol flight went missing in the same region where a Varig 737-300 crashed in 1989 with 54 people aboard, 46 of whom survived.

Yesterday, Bueno told Estado that if there were no survivors it could be the worst air accident ever in Brazil. The worst to date occurred in 1982 when a Vasp 747 crashed in the north-eastern city of Fortaleza killing 137 people.

It was the first major incident for Gol Linhas Aereas Intelligentes SA, an upstart Brazilian airline that took to the skies in 2001 with just six Boeing 737s in 2001, serving seven Brazilian cities.

Gol has grown exponentially since then, dramatically boosting its fleet using the same model of plane to keep costs down while giving passengers cold box lunches and soft drinks instead of hot meals and free alcohol, the norm on most Brazilian flights.

The company is now Brazil’s second-largest airline after Tam Linhas Aereas SA, with more than 500 daily flights within Brazil and to Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay.

It rapidly gained market share by offering low-cost tickets, modelling its service after low-cost carriers in the United States and Europe. Gol, started by the heirs of a successful bus company, also benefited from the demise of Brazil’s flagship airline Varig, which virtually disintegrated earlier this year under a mountain of debt.