Dense jungle hampers Brazil plane crash rescuers

Search crews were lowered by ropes from helicopters through dense jungle searched the wreckage of a Brazilian jetliner that apparently clipped an executive jet and slammed into the ground in the Amazon rain forest, probably killing all 155 people aboard.

It would be Brazil’s worst air disaster if all 149 passengers and six crew aboard Gol airlines Flight 1907 are confirmed dead. The jungle where the Boeing 737-800 went down is so dense that crews had to cut down trees yesterday to clear a space to allow helicopters to land.

“There’s little indication of survivors, but we won’t rule out the possibility,” Brazil Air Force Brig. Gen. Antonio Gomes Leite Filho said in a news conference. “We haven’t fully explored the crash scene, it's a very complicated area.”

Filho said rescue operations would continue until authorities are sure there are no survivors. The search was halted after sunset and was to resume at daybreak today.

The flight vanished on Friday while flying from the jungle city of Manaus to Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro. Searchers located the wreckage yesterday.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva declared three days of mourning for victims of the crash, which cast a cloud over preparations for Brazil’s presidential election tomorrow.

The president of Brazil’s airport authority, Jose Carlos Pereira, said the jetliner and an executive jet may have collided before the crash, though that was still under investigation.

Air force helicopter pilots hovering over the crash site saw no signs of an intact fuselage and the debris appeared to cover only a small area.

Pereira said the plane apparently hit the jungle floor at nearly 500 kph, adding that “at that speed it is highly unlikely any survivors will be found”.

Gol vice president David Barioni said both Brazilians and foreigners were aboard, but did not provide any breakdown.

Rescue teams reached the crash zone hours after air force helicopter pilots found the wreckage, but “so far it is impossible to confirm the existence of survivors in the area,” according to a statement by the airport authority, the air force and the Civil Aviation Agency.

If no survivors are found, it would be the worst air disaster in Brazil’s history, passing the 1982 crash of a Boeing 727 operated by the now-defunct Vasp airline in the north-eastern city of Fortaleza that killed 137 people.

The wreckage was found near the 20,000 hectare Jarina cattle ranch, 1,750km northwest of Sao Paulo in the state of Mato Grosso.

“We heard a loud explosion and some of our employees saw a plane flying low,” ranch manager Milton Picalho said by phone.

He said the plane may have crashed inside the neighbouring 2.8 million-hectare Xingu Indian reservation.

The cause of the crash was unclear, but Pereira said the jetliner may have touched a Brazilian-made Legacy executive jet in flight.

“There was some kind of contact between the two aircraft and it is highly probable that this was the cause,” he said. “But we will only be absolutely certain after a full investigation.

“The main question the investigation must address is how can this happen with two ultramodern aircraft with collision-preventing equipment,” he said.

The air force said the crash investigation could last several months.

New York Times spokeswoman Diane McNulty said Times Business Travel columnist Joe Sharkey was one of seven people aboard the Legacy jet, which was on route from Sao Jose dos Campos, near Sao Paulo to the United States. Sharkey was on assignment in Brazil for a business magazine specialising on corporate jets.

Sharkey said the Legacy jet stabilised after the apparent collision until it landed at a Brazilian air force base in the Amazon state of Para, according to McNulty.

The general director for Brazil’s Civil Aviation Agency Authority, Milton Zuanazzi, said the Legacy plane belonged to a company named Excel Air, which had been authorised to fly the aircraft out of Brazil.

It was the first major incident for Gol Linhas Aereas Intelligentes SA, a Brazilian airline that took to the skies in 2001 with six Boeing 737s, serving seven Brazilian cities. Gol said its jet had been delivered by Boeing Co. just three weeks ago, and had been flown for only 200 hours.

Gol has grown exponentially since it took to the skies, 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.