155 Passengers Lose Their Lives In The Amazon Gol 737-800 Aircrash-Why?

Question

I do wonder what could have caused the B737-800 to apparently nose-dive into the Amazon after the collision with an Embraer Legacy which actually made a safe emergency landing. Cabin Depressurisation ?

Jet Doc, I do agree with what you say on two aircraft getting close enough to collide, it is just very strange to me that this has happened, I have used Gol recently and they are a good airline.

Well Bitburger, apparently the Gol 737-800 was delivered three weeks ago new from Boeing it has less than 250 hours of flight time ( I am not sure if its a leased plane!), I would be very very surprised if they opted NOT to have TCAS intalled!

Mytake, completely agree with all that you say someone screwed up really badly and by the looks of things it could be the Legacy Pilot. He was over the remote Amazon rainforest so maybe decided to "show off" the Embraer plane to the onboard Journalists from the USA Aviation mag and Gol airlines lost 155 people and a multimillion dollar jet as a result, thats just conjecture on my part, but we will see wont we !

Both the Pilots of the legacy have been arrested and will face manslaughter charges, and rightly so and then there is the matter of the multimillion dollar lawsuit against the planes new owners in America for the loss of the lives 155 People on a Brazilian airliner probably owned by and leased from Boeing.This is BIG Pooh !

Apparently, this was a Port wing to Port Wing & Tail(Embraer Tail ) collision with the Embraer winglet being appearing to be injested by the 737 Port engine causing an explosion of that engine and possibly damage to the leading edge of the 737 wing.The plane spirale dout of the sky, which makes it a horrible incident.

The Brazilian newspaper O Globo reported on Tuesday that the Legacy, which was carrying seven Americans, disobeyed a control tower order to descend to a lower altitude before coming into contact with Gol Airlines Flight 1907.
source :http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/04/world/main2061814.shtml#ccmm

Mid-air collisions are extremely rare. Both planes were equipped with anti-collision devices and should have been flying at different altitudes.

Investigators believe that human error, by the Legacy jet’s pilots as well as air traffic controllers, resulted in the Legacy flying towards the jungle city of Manaus at 37,000 ft rather than 36,000.

That is the altitude reserved for planes from Manaus to Brasília — the Boeing’s origin and destination.

When air traffic control realised the problem it could not contact the Legacy, which was in an area over the rainforest where controllers cannot contact planes by radio.

Investigators are trying to determine why the corporate jet survived while the more powerful Boeing 737 crashed.

One theory is that the Gol pilot may have swerved at the last minute to avoid the Legacy, sending his plane into a deadly dive.
source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2387320,00.html

Answer 1

Both aircraft had TCAS. But were they working? The Legacy was cleared at Sao Jose dos Campos to climb to FL370 up to Brasilia, where he was supposed to decend to FL360. But anyways, the suspicin is now that the pilot in the Legacy turned off the transponder, either to climb higher to save fuel, or to perform some maneuvers with the recently acquired jet. That is the reason the TCAS did not work; TCAS only work when both aircraft have them(which they did) and their transponders are on. The 737 was performing a commercial flight, they had a specific time to be at their destination, and the pilot was familiar with the area, having over 15000 hours.

Another possibility is that the towers of Brasilia and Manaus gave the Legacy conflicting FL to follow, but one of them would have realized the mistake in time to make changes to their course...

Lets wait for the investigation... someone screwed up bad, be it the controllers on ground, the pilot in the Legacy or even the 737 pilot...

What I still do not understand is how a winglet from a much smaller airplane can hit a 737, bring the larger airplane down, and lan safe and sound... it doesnt make sense! How can 2 aircraft coming head on hit the horizontal tail of the other? I can undertand hiting the vertical tail, but the elevator??? Is that even possible; given that the engines of the 737 are under the wing and would have hit the Legacy's horizontal tail (which is a "T" tail due to the rear mounted engines....??? Lets just wait.

Answer 2

Hi Mytake-remember the space shuttle disaster from a piece of foam! All it takes is for something critical to occur, weight, speed, altitude of 2 different objects doesn't matter, it is the actual damage. Now apparently both the pilots of the Legacy have been arrested and will face manslaughter charges, there is no room for cowboys in the skys. Remember 9/11 the Terorists turned off some of the aircraft transponders, so they could not be identified who in their right mind makes a fail safe safety system, where it becomes optional at the flick of a switch-pure stupidity, these systems should be operating at all times the aircraft is operating. There have even been cases where the Flight recorders have been turned off as well, so much for the FAA and aircraft manufacturers etc around the world

Answer 3

Contrary to popular belief and what you see in the movies, cabin depresurization does not cause airplanes to crash. The cause of the crash is more likely to be damage to the flight control surfaces or to one of the engines. Perhaps if the wreckage can be recovered and the accident thoroughly investigated, we will have a real answer. Until then, my question would be... Why were two modern passenger jet aircraft able to get close enough to collide in mid-air in the first place? With all the modern navigation equipment and electronics on board, that should not happen.

Answer 4

There is a FAA website that details aircrashes. Boring reading but after the investigations are done most are pilot error. Embraer pilot flying in airliner airspace. 737 tore open flight controls not working fusalage blew apart and people raining down clothes torn off of them by wind at 190 miles an hour. They were dead already no oxygen at 35,000 feet.

Answer 5

What I think is good about the investigations is that the Brazilian Aviation and their traffic safety department, along with American experts from Boeing, are all investigating the case. This way, there is accountability for the true facts, being that both countries are doing their job in finding the answers and therefore no one can point fingers without having evidence to backup their claims.

Answer 6

We do have wonderful avionics systems that would keep this from happening. It's called TCAS, Traffic Collision Avoidance System, but not everyone has it installed. Their bean counters have decided that it is too expensive.

Even if the Gol had it, it would have known the other airplane was there, providing the legacy had the transponder on.

Answer 7

A mid air is a very bad thing. But it comes down to who hit who with what. My money is on the investigators. They will determine what happened, you would be amazed the amount of information that can be developed at a crash site.

Answer 8

If the collision that happened caused the tail of the 737 to be damaged-or torn off- this could've caused it to nose dive into the jungle.

Answer 9

No air bags.