Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Amazing
Last week in Brazil, a Boeing 737-800 collided in mid-air with an Embraer Legacy 600 business jet. In a collision between a big plane and a small plane, you'd expect the big plane to fare better, but incredibly, the Embraer 600 survived and the 737 did not. What's even more incredible is that the pilots of the business jet were able to safely land the plane, and all the crewmembers and passengers walked away completely unharmed. Joe Sharkey, a New York Times reporter and a passenger on the Embraer jet, wrote this article about the collision and its aftermath. I know I keep saying this, but it's incredible.
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3 comments:
I read that, pretty amazing. My question though, which the article didn't address -- how did the Embraer pilots not SEE the 737 coming? (I'm assuming they didn't since no one seemed to know what had happened at first.) It says they were flying northwest and southeast, i.e. right at each other. Don't planes have collision avoidance radar?
It sounds like there was wing damage and tail damage -- meaning the 737 could've come below and to the side of them in a blind spot under the wing or it could have come from behind....
Yes, both planes should've had collision avoidance systems... however, I don't believe that's an international mandate, so if they were registered outside the U.S... also, one may have had a radar that requires it to "talk" to another box rather than just bounce off any solid object - so if the other plane didn't also have a box it does no good.
I've been reading a string of additional articles about the crash, and according to "technical experts," a single electronic failure on the Embraer could have made it undetectable to the 737 and also made the 737 undetectable to it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/world/americas/06crash.html
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