'We've been hit' - survivor recounts Brazil air collision

NEW YORK - A loud bang and "we've been hit" began the most harrowing 30 minutes of Joe Sharkey's life after an executive jet and a Boeing 737 apparently clipped wings, sending the Boeing spiralling into Brazil's rainforest.

In the country's worst airline disaster, all 155 people on the Gol Boeing 737-800 died when it crashed into dense jungle about 1,000km northwest of Brasilia on Friday.

Writing in The New York Times on Tuesday, Sharkey said he was to hear many times that no one survives a midair collision. Yet he and his four fellow passengers, and the two pilots of the ExcelAire Embraer Legacy 600 jet, landed safely at a military base in the jungle at Cachimbo.

Sharkey, who contributes to the newspaper's travel section, was on an assignment for Business Jet Traveler magazine. Also on the plane were executives of Embraer and ExcelAire.

"Hit? By what? I wondered. I lifted the shade. The sky was clear; the sun low in the sky. The rainforest went on forever. But there, at the end of the wing, was a jagged ridge, perhaps a foot high, where the five-foot tall winglet was supposed to be."

Sharkey said no one panicked and, as the minutes passed and the plane lost speed "I wondered how badly ditching -- an optimistic term for crashing -- was going to hurt".

Pilots Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino "were like infantrymen working together in a jam, just as they had been trained to do", he wrote.

They sent out a Mayday signal and scanned their instruments for an airport. After about 25 minutes Sharkey said Lepore spotted a runway through the trees.

"We came down hard and fast. I watched the pilots wrestle the aircraft because so many of their automatic controls were blown. The brought us to a halt with plenty of runway left. We staggered to the exit.

"'Nice flying,' I told the pilots as I passed them. Actually, I inserted an unprintable word between 'nice' and 'flying'."

"'Any time,' Mr Paladino said with an anxious smile."

It wasn't until 7.30pm, about 3-1/2 hours after they were hit, that Sharkey said they found out the Gol plane with 149 passengers and six crew was missing at the same spot where their collision had happened.

Instead of celebrating themselves as "The Amazon Seven," Sharkey wrote, "we now bowed our heads in a long moment of silence, with the sound of muffled tears".

- REUTERS