Aloft

by William Langewiesche

  One might expect that de Alencar would have risen to the occasion. He now knew that he had a jet without a transponder, unresponsive to the radio, that was flying fast toward the boundary of his electronic vision and moving against possible opposing traffic as yet unseen. Closing speeds between jets in cruise may exceed 1,000 miles an hour, which can make a speck glimpsed in the distance very quickly fill the windshield. Admittedly, de Alencar believed that N600XL was at 36,000 feet, and that any opposing traffic would be 1,000 feet higher or lower – but even if correct, these were self-evidently unverified assumptions. Furthermore, until recent years a 2,000-foot vertical separation was the minimum considered safe between airplanes at those altitudes, and though a 1,000-foot separation is now the norm, it is based on the mandatory use of a new generation of precision equipment, including advanced autopilots and altimeters, and closely calibrated transponders. Until communications with the Legacy could be re-established, and the transponder problem resolved, N600XL for all its expense and elaboration was a rogue airplane, precisely flown but inadequately equipped for the tight tolerances of the airspace. There was no reason for panic, but by procedure and common sense de Alencar should have consulted with the Manaus sector, which adjoined his airspace ahead, and made a special effort to keep any traffic there far away. Instead, over the next twenty-six minutes he did little but call five times to the Legacy, in the unhurried hope that the crew might hear him and answer. All but the last call were on the same line-of-sight frequency that had already proved unavailing. De Alencar could have tried to relay a message through other airplanes in flight – this would have been normal – but perhaps because of the language barrier he did not. Through much of that time he had another controller by his side to assist him. Toward the end, as the Legacy approached the limits of Brasília’s airspace, the assistant called Manaus and advised a controller there that the airplane was coming at him at 36,000 feet. He neglected to mention that there had been no communications for 500 miles, and that by the way the Legacy’s transponder had failed. It was nearly 5 PM. Gol Flight 1907 was speeding steadily south. Unseen in the jungle below, two Caiapó women had gone down to a stream to wash.

  *

  Back to 50 miles north of Brasília – and back nearly an hour in time, to the moment of the Legacy’s transponder failure. At that time, the transponder did not power off but switched from ‘Altitude’ to ‘Standby.’ It did this either by itself or because one of the pilots unknowingly pushed a button. Though both are possible, and the latter seems likely, the distinction does not really matter. Pilots, no less than controllers, are expected to notice such events. Far to the north and near Manaus, the southbound Boeing had just leveled at 37,000 feet. In the northbound Legacy at the very same altitude, and on the very same flight path, Lepore and Paladino were alone in the cockpit, continuing to plan the next day’s trip, and relying on electronic elaborations for help.

  Copilot Paladino said, ‘Naw, we can do 48, eight eight four.’

  Captain Lepore said, ‘If we do, uh… A.T.O.? That’s basically, uh, full fuel, isn’t it?’

  At that moment, 4:02 PM, the transponder quit. No chime sounded in the cockpit. Instead, a small warning silently appeared on each of the two Radio Management Units, showing an abbreviation for ‘Standby.’ The understated warnings must have made good sense to Honeywell’s engineers, who inhabit offices in Arizona, but they were not helpful to the pilots far away in flight, who were drowning in their products. For the next 500 miles the ‘Standby’ warnings remained in view but unseen. The pilots were occupied with other things: their automated flight-performance calculations, fraternal visits from the passengers in the cabin, offers of water and soft drinks. The runway at Manaus was a particular concern – it had been shortened because of construction. At one point Lepore said, ‘We can do the landing, all right. Just have to get on it.’ He was not acutely worried. He laughed wryly. ‘Nothin’ like banging the first flight of the friggin’ airplane.’

  Bang it, prang it, really fuck it up. But first you have to screw the pooch in your mind. Paladino matched Lepore’s tone. He said, ‘We couldn’t get a nice long runway, you know? You get stuck in a fucking place in the middle of the Amazon Unknown.’ He glanced out at the brown-green expanses below. He said, ‘Aw, beautiful. But it don’t look so Amazonish.’

  Lepore said, ‘Nah, it doesn’t either.’

  It didn’t because it wasn’t yet. Later, for a while, it still wouldn’t, because that part of the forest has been cut down. Aw, beautiful. A few clouds floated ahead. Paladino considered a turn to smooth the ride. He said, ‘I guess we’ll have to deviate.’ It was a proposition. He thought again. He said, ‘Aw, maybe we’ll be all right.’ They were doing 500 miles an hour. It seemed slow because the clouds were large, and they could see them far ahead. Lepore said, ‘Aw, probably will.’ He dropped something on the cockpit floor. ‘Aw, goddamn it.’

  Navigational precision poses dangers not immediately apparent. In the Legacy, it was based on three systems. The first was an ultra-accurate altimeter, capable of measuring the atmosphere with such finesse that at Flight Level 370 it could distinguish the Legacy’s altitude within perhaps five feet. The second was almost as accurate. It was the airplane’s satellite-based GPS receiver, a positioning system that kept track of the airplane’s geographic location within a distance of half of its wingspan, and that, linked to a navigational database, defined the assigned airway with equal precision. The third was an autopilot that flew better than its human masters, and, however mindlessly, worked with the altimeter and GPS to keep the airplane spot-on. Such capability is relatively new. Until recently, head-on airplanes mistakenly assigned the same altitude and route by air traffic control would almost certainly have passed some distance apart, due to the navigation slop inherent in their systems. But this is no longer true. The problem for the Legacy was that the Boeing coming at them on the same assigned flight path had equipment that was every bit as precise.

  Paladino referred to a high-altitude navigational chart. It was made of paper as strong as money. He said, ‘In case we lose radios, we have a bunch of frequencies we can use.’ The radios occasionally sounded with exchanges between the controllers and other airplanes. Slowly, however, a change occurred. As the Legacy sailed beyond the range of the antenna on the ground, eventually the controller’s side of the transmissions could no longer be heard. Lepore and Paladino did not wake up to this as they might have in the United States, perhaps because they discounted Portuguese and did not realize that the transmissions they continued to hear were one-sided affairs, exclusively from other pilots in flight. At the start of this unknown condition of communications loss – about when de Alencar made his unsuccessful first call – Paladino pulled out a new digital camera and started to play with it. He said, ‘I don’t know how to get video on this thing.’ It was as if the Legacy’s system had not been confusing enough.

  Lepore said, ‘Press the video button. No, I don’t know.’

  ‘Where would that be?’

  ‘I don’t know. Hold on.’ Lepore took the camera. A minute of silence went by, broken by an aircraft transmission in Portuguese. Lepore said, ‘It’s probably one of these, on the rotators.’

  ‘Yeah. You’d think. Right?’

  Lepore said, ‘I’m not sure. I don’t… don’t know if you can with this camera. I mean, gotta be something with setting up here…’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘But I don’t know which one. You’d have to probably read the manual, see which setting it would be.’

  Paladino had the camera again. He said, ‘I’m afraid to read anything else right now.’

  ‘Yeah, well that’s fine. Don’t do. Yeah, just shut it off.’

  It was good advice. But with their attention again focused on the cockpit, the pilots still did not notice that the transponder was on standby. Another warning they missed was a small sign saying TCAS OFF, shown at the bottom of each pilot’s Primary Flight Display, the screens they w
ould have referenced for basic flight control had the autopilot not by law been handling that chore. TCAS stands for Traffic Collision Avoidance System. It is a nested safety device independent of air traffic control that converses electronically with other airplanes in flight, and in the case of imminent collision alerts the pilots of both airplanes and negotiates a solution – typically instructing one crew to descend and the other to climb. It is required equipment in almost all airliners and jets, and is considered to be so reliable that its instructions supersede those of air traffic controllers. It works, however, only between airplanes with active transponders. In the Legacy cockpit, therefore, the TCAS necessarily dropped out when the transponder switched to standby. Again, there were no warning chimes. But as a consequence the Legacy was now flying blind to the presence of other airplanes, and was itself invisible to their otherwise functional TCAS displays.

  Lepore said he needed to use the toilet. He twisted out of his seat, saying, ‘How the fuck do I get back?’ and left the cockpit. He must have been waylaid by the passengers, because he was gone for almost seventeen minutes. During that time Paladino had some peace. The jet was fast approaching the limits of Brasília’s airspace. Two transmissions came over the radio, both from distant airplanes in Portuguese. Paladino spoke once to himself. He said, ‘Fuck did I put my glasses?’ For long minutes afterward the radio was silent. Paladino must finally have wondered why, because at last he attempted to raise air traffic control. On the frequency 125.05 he radioed twice, ‘Brasília, N600XL.’ When he got no reply, he began to ‘shop’ the other frequencies listed on the navigation chart, systematically giving each frequency two tries, for a total of twelve calls over a period of five minutes. It is now known that none of the calls got through to de Alencar, and for a variety of reasons, including that some receivers were simply switched off at Brasília Center, and that by a vicious fluke at least two of Paladino’s calls were blocked by other airplanes transmitting at the same time.

  By chance, Paladino’s attempts to raise air traffic control left the Legacy’s radio on a frequency which de Alencar then used for his final attempt to get through. As a result, de Alencar’s voice suddenly came across the Legacy’s radio, instructing the flight to check in with Amazonia Center, the facility at Manaus. De Alencar radioed, ‘N600XL, Brasília blind. Contact Amazonia Center, 123.32. If unable, ah, 126.45. N600XL.’ His English was accented but clear enough – or almost. The record shows that three minutes remained. If Paladino had fully understood the call, he would have switched to Manaus’s frequency and checked in with a routine report of the Legacy’s altitude. It is possible that the Manaus controller, who had been working the Gol flight at 37,000 feet and had just handed it off to Brasília, would have had the reflexes and skills to turn the Legacy, or get it immediately to descend or climb. But Paladino did not wholly hear the new frequency. He responded to de Alencar, ‘No, just trying to reach you. I’m sorry, what was the first frequency for N600XL? 1-2-3… I didn’t get the last two…’ There was no answer. Paladino tried several more times, but without success. Lepore returned to the cockpit and strapped himself in. He said ‘Sorry,’ about his absence. Paladino explained the trouble they seemed to be having with radio communications. They began experimenting with frequencies, expecting eventually to raise Manaus.

  Maybe a minute remained. The Boeing was approaching fast from about thirty miles away. As a narrow head-on silhouette it would have been hard to spot had the Legacy pilots been looking outside. Furthermore, because of illusions associated with the curvature of the earth, the oncoming airplane would have appeared to be significantly higher until the last few seconds before impact. For the Boeing pilots, spotting the Legacy would have been harder still. The captain was one of Gol’s most seasoned men, a line instructor named Decio Chaves Jr, who at age forty-four had logged 14,900 hours in flight, nearly a third of them in the latest 737s. His copilot was Thiago Jordao Cruso, aged twenty-nine, an advanced apprentice with 3,850 hours. The 737 they were flying was fresh from Boeing’s production line and had been in service with Gol for merely two weeks. The flight south so far had been routine, with the airplane cruising on autopilot, at all times exactly where it was supposed to be. The pilots spent much of the flight looking through photographs of their colleagues and friends. About ten minutes before the end, a flight attendant entered the cockpit for a flirtatious chat. She asked them if they had seen a video of Brazilian model Daniela Cicarelli having sex on a beach. One of the pilots said, ‘Love, come here. Can you bring something like that for us?’ They laughed. As she was leaving, the pilot called out, ‘Come back, my love!’ Soon afterward the controller in Manaus gave them a frequency change to Brasília Center and instructed them to delay checking in until they got to a certain waypoint a few minutes ahead. The pilots switched to the new frequency and, in an odd twist to the story, heard de Alencar’s last broadcast to the Legacy – clearly audible on the Boeing’s cockpit voice recording – because the controller had shotgunned it across multiple frequencies simultaneously. The Boeing’s pilots did not, however, hear the Legacy’s requests for clarification, which Paladino made across a frequency that they were not on. It would not have mattered anyway. The Boeing’s TCAS was clear. The pilots had no reason to suspect that the Legacy was near. They continued to look at pictures. There was one of a pilot named Bruno, of a marathon, of a waterfall, and of a quati – a funny four-legged creature that had torn into some bags.

  The Legacy came streaking at the Boeing about 30 feet to the left of the fuselage and 2 feet lower. The displacement was infinitesimal on the scale of the sky, and a measure of impressive navigational precision. The Legacy’s winglet acted like a vertically held 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 – an urgent klaxon and a robotic voice insistently warning, Bank angle! Bank angle! Bank angle!, as if the crew might need the advice. Back in the cabin the passengers screamed and shouted. The pilots reacted as one might expect, fighting desperately to regain control. They probably did not know what had gone wrong. They certainly never mentioned it. What is unusual is that they also did not swear. Ten seconds into the dive, one of them did cry ‘Aye!,’ but the other urged him to stay calm. ‘Calma!’ he said, and seconds later he said it again. If pilots must die in an airplane, all would choose to finish so well. Of course these two knew they were gone, but they did what they could, even extending the landing gear to slow the dive. The gesture was hopeless. Twenty-two seconds into the plunge the airplane’s over-speed warning came on with a rattle that continued to the end. Forces inside the airplane rapidly grew until, thirty seconds into the dive, they exceeded four Gs – the gravity-load threshold beyond which some passengers must have begun to black out as the forces drained blood from their minds. Maybe they were the lucky ones or maybe it didn’t matter. In the cockpit the pilots kept trying to fly, struggling with the controls and exchanging a few words which are impossible to discern over the bedlam of alarms. Forty-five seconds into the dive came another ‘Aye!’ Seven seconds later, at 7,000 feet, the Boeing broke into three parts, which plummeted in formation into the forest below.

  In the Legacy the collision sounded like a snap. Lepore grunted as if he had been punched in the gut. The airplane rolled left, and the autopilot disengaged with a robotic warning and three chimes. Lepore grabbed the controls. He said, ‘What the HELL was that?’ He sounded swamped in adrenaline. Paladino for his part sounded pumped up for the game. He said, ‘All right, just fly the airplane, dude! Just fly the airplane!’ He checked the cabin pressurization. He said, ‘It’s not… We don’t have explosive decom
pression.’ He may have thought that Lepore was shaky, or that on the basis of his own greater experience with that category of jet he perhaps should take over. He said, ‘You want me to fly it, dude? You want me to fly it?’ Lepore did not hear the question, or he chose not to answer. The Legacy was badly out of whack, insisting on rolling to the left, and requiring Lepore to hold the controls a half-throw to the right just to maintain wings-level flight. He was handling the airplane well enough. But he was extremely anxious. He said, ‘What – we got fucking HIT?’

  Paladino said, ‘I dunno, dude. Lemme fly it.’

  Lepore acquiesced. Paladino then not only took the controls but assumed command. This passed unsaid between the two men. Paladino was decisive. Lepore had not completely folded, but under the stress his mental processes had slowed. Paladino said, ‘All right, declare an emergency,’ and Lepore hesitated over the most basic frequency known. He asked, ‘What is it, twenty-one five?’ Paladino said, ‘Yeah, twenty-one five.’ That exchange placed Paladino firmly in charge. He said, ‘Whatever the fuck that was… we have to get down.’

  Lepore said, ‘Go!’ A passenger came to the cockpit and said, ‘You know we lost a winglet?’ Lepore said, ‘Did we? Where the fuck did he come from?’ To the passengers back in the cabin Paladino said, ‘All right, we’re going down! We’re declaring an emergency! Sit down!’ Breathing heavily into his microphone, Lepore made the first emergency call to air traffic control. There was no response. Paladino pulled the throttles back and pushed the airplane into a descent. The left winglet had torn away, leaving a jagged stump, the left wing had bent upward, and along its upper surface some of the skin was separating from the internal structure. The passengers could see the heavily deflected aileron necessary to maintain control. What they could not see was that the Legacy’s tail had been hit as well.