User:4oeh6dkland
4oeh6dkland (Talk | contribs) |
4oeh6dkland (Talk | contribs) |
||
| Line 378: | Line 378: | ||
<li>What would a feminist do - The Guardian _6Rugby union The Guardian_14< li> | <li>What would a feminist do - The Guardian _6Rugby union The Guardian_14< li> | ||
| + | |||
| + | < ul> | ||
| + | |||
| + | I was sitting near the front of a business jet my company was delivering from our factory in Brazil to New York. It was 29 September 2006. There were two pilots up front and five of us in the cabin. Soon we were cruising over the Amazon jungle at 37,,000 feet and 500mph. The skies were clear; the plane was beautiful. I remember saying to Henry,cheap jordans, a colleague, “It doesn’t get any better than this.”<br> | ||
| + | <br>I was standing up getting a phone charger from my bag when all of a sudden – bam! – I felt an impact. I stumbled a little but then the plane returned to flying straight and level. It was as if we’d hit a speed bump at 100mph. I returned to my seat in stunned silence. As I was strapping in, Henry said, “We’ve been hit.” I looked out the window on the left side and saw that the winglet, the bit that curves up at the end of the wing, had been sheared off. The metal was separating and there was a sheen of fuel. I remember staring at that wing, expecting the worst. I thought about my kids and hoped they weren’t going to read about me dying.<br> | ||
| + | <br>The pilots found a military airport deep in the jungle. It was straight ahead but we were a little too high, so we had to fly past and make a turn above the treetops: we had no way of knowing if the wing would hold up. But after the longest 35 minutes imaginable, we landed. There was such an incredible sense of relief.<br> | ||
| + | <br>The soldiers looked stunned to see us, as if a UFO had landed. Outside the plane, we could see the tail had also been damaged; it was a complete mystery as to what had happened. As we speculated over pizza in the barracks, where we had no phone signal or internet access, the only Portuguese speaker in our group came over and said, “Guys, I’ve some news… There’s a missing airliner.” The hairs on my arms still stand up when I remember that moment. People were crying, praying.<br> | ||
| + | <br>We later learned that we had collided head-on with a Boeing 737 operated by Gol, a Brazilian airline, with 154 people on board. The winglet on our plane had taken off the left wing of the bigger plane, which immediately started to spiral and broke up. It took three minutes for the pieces to crash into the jungle. Nobody survived.<br> | ||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | Experience: I flew solo around the world in a hot-air balloon | ||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | <br> | ||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | Read more | ||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| + | <br>To this day I cannot fathom how,cheap jordans free shipping, at that altitude and speed – a closure rate of 1,000mph – two planes could have contact head-on and not both crash. People don’t just walk away from that. It happened so quickly that even the pilots didn’t see anything.<br> | ||
| + | <br>It was then Brazil’s worst aviation disaster and it triggered a national crisis. The next evening, we were flown out by military jet in a lightning storm to be interviewed by federal police in another town. We watched as they brought our black box in. By the time they had found the wreckage of the other plane, the government had already declared us guilty.<br> | ||
| + | <br>In Brazil, the military oversees accident investigation and air traffic control, and we worried that the investigation would be tainted. The pilots’ passports were confiscated and I ended up camped out with them on the top floor of the Marriott hotel in Rio. I thought they might be killed if they went to jail, because the hysteria and propaganda were so great.<br> | ||
| + | <br>After two months, their passports were returned. Meanwhile lawyers descended on the families of the victims. The investigation by the US National Transportation Safety Board later found that air traffic control failures were to blame; but the situation in Brazil hasn’t yet been fully resolved for the pilots,cheap jordans for sale, who were acquitted in absentia of all but one charge,cheap jordan shoes, of safety failure, in 2012 by a Brazilian federal court. They still fly today, but if they land in Brazil they could face arrest.<br> | ||
| + | <br>It’s hard to be happy about survival when it’s attached to the deaths of so many others. It never leaves you. I have a piece of that wing in my office and I look at it every day. It’s a reminder of how fleeting life can be. After the accident, I was focused on our own survival and the wellbeing of the pilots. But since then I’ve felt only a growing sadness for the families of the victims.<br> | ||
| + | <br>? As told to Simon Usborne<br> | ||
| + | <br>Do you have an experience to share? Email experience@theguardian<ul> | ||
| + | |||
| + | <li>< li> | ||
| + | |||
| + | <li>How w< li> | ||
| + | |||
| + | <li>< li> | ||
< ul> | < ul> | ||
Your Privacy Choices