A Decimal Point Decided the Fate of These Passengers... | Varig Flight 254

uh ladies and gentlemen this is your captain speaking we have no idea where we are where we we are these are probably the last words that you want to hear from your pilots and yet A variation of this is exactly what the passengers of varg flight 254 got to he now what led up to this absurd situation is both a fascinating tale about the limitations of the human mind and a lesson in how not to act in a cockpit stay tuned the 3rd of September 1989 was a nice and mostly clear day over Central Brazil there were only scattered clouds around but the continuous burning of rainforest in order to clear land for agriculture was causing some localized areas of what's known as dry fog or smoke back then the dominant airline in Brazil was varig who operated a large Fleet of Boeing aircraft including the Boeing 73700 which was a real domestic Workhorse now at that time it was still common in Brazil to operate flight in a train-like fashion by starting a flight in one city and then conducting intermediate stops at different smaller airports where passengers could either stay on or disembark depending on where they were traveling to if you were unlucky and wanted to fly all the way to the end destination this could mean a quite long journey lasting the whole day and it was in this way that V flight 254 was being operated the flight had started in sa Paulo in the morning and then operated North up through ubera uberlandia gu and then Brazilia where a cruise change was scheduled to take place the flight was then planned to continue up to imperatrice maraba and finally BM which was situated close to the Atlantic coast next to the mouth of the Amazon River the two pilots who were taking over the flight had been spending their time awaiting the arrival of their aircraft by looking through the weather nooms and flight plans for the coming three flights the weather was like I mentioned before very nice and the departure time was also quite civilized so they were both in a very good mood as the day Duty started and it looked like everything was going to be quite straightforward when they looked through the Nots there wasn't many things written up except that an NDB called crj karakas was inoperative and had been so for the last 4 months an NDB is a non-directional beacon and is one of the least sophisticated naves that we use in aviation it basically works by sending out a continuous radio signal typically between 150 to 530 khz which is then interpreted by the aircraft's automatic direction finding ADF instrument who turns a needle towards that Beacon it's a very crude instrument one that can make any fresh instrument pilot start sweating when thinking about using it for Holdings or approaches but it generally does a very good job just like any other nav that we use it also transmits an identification Morse code which we Pilots have to listen into and verify before using it for navigation and since it transmits on lower frequencies than other beacons it has a quite long range which can follow the curvature of the earth slightly but this also makes the ndbs very sensitive to environmental disturbances like thunderstorms obstacle and the ionospheric layer in the ATM osphere remember that in any case it seems like the two pilots didn't look too closely at that particular Nota and inoperative NDB was not a big deal since for the most of the three flights there was other more precise VR beacons available and this particular NDB was not even planned to be used on any of those routes also since the weather was really nice the captain was quite confident that he would be able to navigate visually if he needed to using the lower level navigation charge that they in with them back in 1989 the aviation infrastructure especially around rural remote areas in the Amazon rainforest was very sparsely built out so navigating partially visually was not as uncommon as it is today on top of that there was also a complete lack of radar coverage for a large part of Light 2 fire force coming journey and GPS was not readily available yet it was still take several years before that would become a standard on almost all aircraft and that's also worth remembering who were the pilots who were going to operate these flights then well the captain was 32 years old and had been flying for varig for the last 7 years before that he had been operating for the Brazilian Air Force and had then flown on the Boeing 727 before finally becoming a captain on the 737 almost exactly one year prior to this flight he had a total flying experience of just over 6,900 hours of which 980 had been flown on the 737 his first officer was 28 years old and significantly less experienced he had only been employed in the airline for a little over a year and had started flying on the Boeing 737 very recently in March of 1989 together this meant that he had flown a little under 900 hours in total and only 442 hours on the 73 now it's pretty safe to say that with the strict hierarchy that existed in varig at the time combined with the captain's prior military background under the first officer's low experience the power gradient between these two pilots was likely quite steep but that was not highlighted in the final report I should also mention here that I'm basing this story on both the final report and some eyewitness accounts including the first offices as the report in itself wasn't very detailed anyway when the aircraft finally arrived in the early afternoon the two pilots were ready and they walked out in order to meet the aircraft on the apron it was a beautiful 73700 with its cigar shaped low bypass JTA Delta engines howling on the wings as it pulled up to the stand the pilots let the passengers disembark before they enter the aircraft greeted the cabin crew and then talked a little bit with the off-going pilots they reported that the aircraft had been behaving beautifully and that there was no open technical issues with it so with those good news the pilots thanked their colleagues and started preparing the aircraft for the departure where the first officer would be pilot flying for the first leg and the captain would fly the following two all checks went by smoothly and that meant that the aircraft soon took off for the first flight up towards imperatrice and then onwards towards maraba these flights were reportedly completely uneventful except that the captain encountered some difficulty in landing at maraba due to a heavy layer of smoke that had moved in over the airport the visibility through that smoke had been made even worse by the fact that they were Landing in the late afternoon but it sun would have illuminated the smoke at a very low angle anyway they did eventually manage to land and then taxi in and while some of the passengers were disembarking the first officer went outside to do the walk around while the captain started setting up the aircraft for the last short 40-minute hop over toward BM now this last leg was a little bit different than the previous ones because there was no published Airway connecting the two airports with each other Airways are like motorways in the sky and they are clearly marked out on low and high highle IFR charge which we Pilots always have access to the Airways especially back then generally went between different groundbased navat with the courses between them clearly marked out the captain was very used to navigating using these CHS but because he couldn't do that on this leg he instead had to look down on his flight plan which also included the courses between the different waypoints in this case he was especially looking for the first magnetic course to follow after departure and here we come to one of the first clues of what caused this debacle you see varig had only a few months earlier started operating aircraft with an autopilot system that was able to accept heading data with a Precision down to a tenth of a degree the boing 737 however could not do that but to keep things common across the fleet the airline had started issuing flight plans with the courses depicted as a four-digit number instead of the standard three digits but for some reason they hadn't included any comma or decimal point in those four figures to highlight the fact that the last figure was a tenth of a degree and this meant that when the captain now likely for the first time since this new format had been introduced looked down on his flight plan to find that first course what he saw was 0270 this was supposed to mean 027.0 de meaning a northnorth easterly tract to follow toward BM but it's quite easy to see how it could be interpreted as 270 degrees instead so without thinking more about it the captain set a bug on his horizontal situational indicator HSI of 270 deges to remind him of what course to follow after the departure and then he just continued with his setup now I'm guessing that quite a few of you are right now spitting out your coffee because even with a very limited knowledge of navigation most of us knows that 270° is a straight Westerly course and that would make absolutely no sense if you're intending to navigate towards a destination up in the Northeast but this is nonetheless exactly what happened after this the next thing the captain needed to set up was a relatively new system of the 737 known as the performance management system or PMS for short this was a crude predecessor to the flight management system designed to help optimize the aircraft flight profile based on performance data and the distance to the destination the system would help to calculate when it was time to start descending give inputs to the outer throttle and inform the pilots regarding things like fuel performance Etc but the PMS was not connected to the navigation system per se it only counted down the distance flown from the total distance entered so the captain entered 178 miles to the destination from his flight plan and then started his final Flight Deck preparation meanwhile the first officer had been outside and when he came back into the cockpit he looked down at the same flight plan as well as looking at what the captain had set on his HSI and just cop that over onto his own instruments now when you are planning to fly an aircraft according to instrument flight rules IFR you are required to set up the instrument so that the aircraft can be flown and navigated safely without any outside visual references in this case that would have required the pilots to tune the navs that they were going to use on Route which consisted of an NDB Beacon near the runway at maraba and a more precise VR Beacon at their destination now that VR at might be out of range early on in the flight but there was also another VR close to the route at tukuri which could have been used as a verification we don't know exactly what type of departure briefing that the captain did or if he did any at all but in any case it didn't include those naats because they were never tuned instead it seems like the captain thought that the weather was so good that it would be easy to find BM airport visually if he just followed his initial course that type of navigation is known as dead reckoning and is normally used when there's a total lack of navade so all you really have are tracks and timings you could maybe argue that the captain had a timing here since the PMS was primed and ready to go for him but if you're going to do this which is very rare by the way you better make sure that you're following the correct track in any case I highly doubt that any real departure briefing actually took place since that would have definitely highlighted the absurdity of that initial vestly track that they were now planning but instead the last 48 passengers were boarded giving a total count of 54 passengers and crew on board when they finally started taxiing out for the departure into the sunset and I will tell you all about what happened next after 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in the 1990 World Cup some of the passengers actually asked the flight attendants if they've heard anything about the score and this was relay to the pilots who in turn asked at traffic control about it now this is something that happens almost all the time even to this day when there are important matches being played and ATC normally are really helpful if they have time which they did have in this case meaning that the pilots were able to give the passengers a match update and this fact actually led up to one of the early theories about this accident that the pilots were actually listening to a football game in the cockpit when in reality they just got that information told to them by ATC and that's what those Witnesses then misinterpreted anyway when we're on the topic of air traffic control the airport in maraba was uncontrolled so the only ATC interaction the pilots had was with a flight information service officer who was sitting in a separate building away from the runway he did not have any type of access to any radar screen nor any other Advanced tracking equipment instead his only job was to provide weather and traffic information and apparently football scores but that meant that when the pilots were ready for departure they informed the FIS officer who then likely just gave them Runway clear together with the latest wind information after that it was up to the flight crew themselves to depart by their own discretion and then eventually switch over to the BM controller once they had gained some altitude at time 1735 local time the captain first stabilized the engines at 1.4 epr and then set takeoff thrust which caused the 727 to start accelerating down the runway the takeoff was completely normal and after reaching around 1,000 ft the captain asked for the flaps to be retracted and then started turning towards his first indicated track of 270° given that this was now in the late afternoon that initial track would have meant that the aircraft was turning straight towards the Setting Sun glowing bright orange through the dense smoke layers now this should have served as a first indication that something was definitely off both of the pilots should have known that their destination was located to the north of them meaning that some type of basic spatial situational awareness should have kicked in here but sadly it didn't instead the pilots just focused on completing the after takeoff checks and continue their climb up to their intended Cru altitude of flat level 290 or 29 9,000 ft as they got up over the smoke layer the Amazon jungle started stretching out before them in the fading sunlight as expected the visibility was good so the captain was confident that he would be able to find his way towards the destination visually he looked down on his PMS which showed that the nautical miles left to destination was ticking down as expected and this likely just reaffirmed his feeling of being on the correct track but remember this PMS was only counting miles flown not if it was flown in the actually correct direction now if the maraba and BM navat would have been tuned they would have clearly shown that something was now very very wrong but since they weren't they were not of any type of use here after the flight continued the pilot soon did tune in the BM V in order to start getting guidance towards the airport but strangely it didn't seem to work this initially confused the pilots who knew that they should now be well within range of that Beacon and they therefore decided to contact the BM air traffic controller to check if the status of the VR was okay but when they did that there was initially only static h on the frequency this was truly strange so the pilots started suspecting that maybe they were suffering from some kind of radio malfunction here they started looking at the circuit breakers which was located behind them but none of them had popped and everything else seemed to be working as it should the captain then suggested that they should try the HF radio instead of their normal VHF radio and when they did that they finally managed to contact the aeronautical information service officer in BM this caused some initial confusion as this AIS officer was sitting in a separate room in the tower away from the active controllers but eventually he managed to start relaying information between the aircraft and the actual controller in charge meanwhile the pilots had continued to try and use their normal radio and had managed to get into contact with another aircraft inbound 2 BM that aircraft reported that the navade seems to be working fine and that they could talk to the bblm controller without any type of problems obviously this was all super confusing for the pilot but if we look at what was actually going on here it all makes complete sense since the aircraft had now been flying for over 20 minutes in the wrong direction it meant that they were now well outside of the range of both the VR at BM and the normal VHF radio from the controller the HF radio was operating at a lower frequency and therefore had a significantly longer range which is why they were able to get into contact with that AIS officer and the fact that they were able to reach that other aircraft was likely due to both the position of that aircraft which might have been closer to them and the fact that it was significantly higher up helping to extend the range in any case the captain was now looking out through his window trying to locate a characteristic Bay next to BM but no matter how much he squinted he still couldn't locate anything that he recognized all he good see was the setting sun in the west and the dense jungle stretching out below them they had now been flying for 23 minutes and since this was only supposed to be a 40-minute flight the PMS indicated that they had already passed the ideal point to start descending the captain saw this and told the first officer to ask the controller for an initial descent clearance the first officer complied and sent this request via the HF radio to the still confused AIS officer who managed to get the confirmation from the controller that they could indeed start descending initially down to flight level 200 this very confusing situation had also meant that there had not been any time for proper approach briefing or verification of any other intermediate navad so as this descent was now initiated they were still essentially Flying Blind and it was now also starting to get dark outside the aircraft continued flying with the pilots anxiously scanning The Horizon in front of them for any signs of their destination and when they look down on their PMS it soon showed that they should be overhead BM and then that they had passed it with 5 10 20 miles how could this be maybe they had entered the wrong mileage into the PMS or something the AIS officer continued asking them to please try and reach the BM air traffic controller directly on the VHF frequency instead but it was of no use all that the pilots could hear on that radio was static and the odd call from some other aircraft when the PMS finally showed that they had overflown the destination by 30 nautical miles the captain assumed that they must have somehow missed the airport and they therefore reversed their course and started flying back the same way they had come in order to not miss it again they now also asked the a officer to relay a request to descend to an even lower altitude down to 4,000 ft because from that height they should definitely see the airport now I think it's really interesting to see just how strong confirmation bias and denial can actually be here these two pilots now thought that they must have overflown their destination and somehow missed it knowing full well that 30 nautical miles past their destination they should have been out over the Atlantic Ocean which they clearly were not still they now descended onto an easterly heading hoping that they would be able to see the destination airport which by all logic couldn't possibly be below them at this point they had also flown longer than their intended total flight dur and almost an hour into the wrong direction and by descending down to a lower altitude they will now counter much denser air which would reduce the remaining range considerably but the captain was not worried he was supremely confident in his navigational skills and according to the first officer who had now started to seriously doubt their position the captain was also arrogant and just dismissed his concerns at this point they had about 1 and a half hours of fuel left which should have been plenty to get them back to maraba the airport that they had just left if they would have tried but instead of going for that the captains seemed dead set on getting themselves and the passengers to BM this is something known as get aitis which could have been triggered by the captain fearing repercussions from the airline if it didn't complete the flight as they were now descending the first officer continued trying to find something to navigate on and he remembered that there were a couple of commercial radio stations in BM transmitting frequencies that the ADF equipment in the aircraft would be able to tune in if he could find those stations the ADF needles would start pointing towards those trans mters and that would make them finally able to hopefully find BM the first frequency he tried came in just barely with a transmission covering that football game we talked about before but the second came in loud and clear playing a live Sunday religious service the frequency of this transmission should have belonged to radio liberal in BM and as soon as the signal was received the ADF needle now started pointing straight to the South while the first officer was fiddling around with this the captain was still looking outside as The Descent continued and he saw a big river suddenly stretching out from left to right in front of him maybe this could be the Amazon if that was the case Milan knew that it would take them towards the destination if they could just figure out which way to turn and that was soon decided by the Triumph of the first officers attempt to turn in radio liberal so all of a sudden they now had both a river and an instrument pointing where to turn so with a Sunday sermon streaming through the ADF receiver and the aircraft descending through 10,000 ft they now turned their aircraft to the Right and started following the river down towards the South again here it's probably worth pointing out that the Amazon River is probably one of the most well-known features in the Brazilian landscape and the pilots must have known that it flows West to East so again how would it make any kind of sense to follow a river towards the South this is just a further example of how confirmation bias Works where only indications that confirms the bias is considered and everything else that speaks against it is ignored it was now almost completely dark outside as the aircraft leveled off at 4,000 ft and turned to follow the twists of the river the two pilots were anxiously looking outside hoping that the lights of the city would appear behind every new turn but they never did so something was still obviously very wrong if they had just missed and flown past the airport initially it should have appeared long ago as they had now been flying for almost another hour at 4,000 ft it was only now that the first officer started to remember that the initial heading towards BM had supposed to be a reasonably low number meaning a nodly heading and when he now looked outside he could clearly see the Southern Cross constellation ahead of them what was going on the captain must have obviously thought the very same thing so he now asked the first officer to find the low level navigational short and have a look at the correct tracks and when they finally found it they realized their mistake L they had been flying 270° after the departure instead of 0 27° which meant that the river that they were now following couldn't possibly be the Amazon in reality they were following the singu river but they had no idea about that obviously and I can't even begin to Fathom the feeling that these two pilots now must have felt in their stomachs they had flown their airliner full of people in completely the wrong direction for over 2 hours and we're now following some known River into the jungle as their fuel was steadily decreasing since they had left they had made so many twists and turns that even if it would have been initially possible to find their way back to maraba now it would be close to Impossible without the help of some sort of reliable navade but what about the ADF and that radio signal that they had been following well here the story would almost become comical if it wasn't so crushingly sad because it turns out that the radio signals that they had been receiving didn't come from BM as they had assumed instead it was coming from another radio station called radio club de gu which was using the same frequency but was situated in a city called gu hundreds of kilometers to the South now that station should theoretically be out of range especially at that low altitude but due to atmospheric conditions on this evening the signals had bounced on the ionosphere greatly extending their range this by the way is why why it's not a great idea to use signals from commercial radio stations for navigation since it's very hard to verify their true origin the pilots obviously didn't know that they were Now tracking a false signal but they did know that time was of the essence they needed to find out where they were fast otherwise they would run out of fuel before they could reach any airport at the time they realized their mistake they had been flying at 4,000 ft for 1 hour and 14 minutes meaning that the total time then had now been Airborne was 2 hours and 10 minutes on a flight that had been planned to last only 40 minutes they had taken some extra fuel with them obviously but now there was less than 1 hour left before they would run completely dry especially if they kept flying at this low altitude where the fuel burn was significantly higher now you would think that pilots in a situation like this would call out a Mayday call and try to muster up any help they could possibly get but that didn't happen as I mentioned before there was no radar available in the area so there wasn't much that ATC could have done anyway but maybe they could have come with some valuable suggestions or at least they would now know that the aircraft was completely lost the controllers in bam had initiated the uncertainty phase when the aircraft still hadn't arrived an hour after their takeoff time but a full emergency still had not been initiated the pilots knew that they had to do something so the captain initiated a climb to 8,500 ft in order to try and get into contact with some NDB naves in either maraba or maybe in the more Southern airport of karakas and when when those frequencies were tuned they actually did pick up signals again telling the pilots to turn towards the South now with only 1,800 kilos of few left but in yet another cruel Twist of Fai it turns out that what the ADF receivers were actually picking up here were neither of those naats the pilots were hoping for remember the karakas andb had actually been not time as inoperative and maraba was now just to far away instead those signals belong to NBS in gu and B garas who were using the same frequencies and those signals had also bounced off the ionosphere reaching much further than they were designed to do now the pilots would have known that if they would have taken the time to carefully listen to the morse code identifiers of those navat but confirmation bias is like I mentioned a very powerful thing and in the situation that they now found themselves in they likely refused to accept any indications that would counteract their own mental model of what was going on soon the Captain asked the first officer if he could try to locate the L3 low-level navigation chart as he had a hunch that they might be somewhere in that area Southwest of maraba which was actually a very good guess the first officer tried to find that shot but in the dark cockpit and under this extreme stress he never managed to find it and that was very unfortunate because if it would have they would have figured out that they were actually still in range of another airport a military base called kashino about 100 nautical miles away but since he couldn't find it they instead just continued on their suddenly course chasing those faulty ndbs the minutes continued passing by in what must have felt like hours and soon the terrifying reality started creeping in they were going to run out of fuel and would have to make a forced Landing in total darkness in the dense Amazon jungle now this realization didn't cause the pilots to start panicking nor did they start making any particular preparations for the coming crash instead a feeling of resignation started spreading and they were both heard saying things like maybe this be nothing but a dream this clearly shows something known as disassociation meaning that they didn't feel like this was happening or was real or that it was happening to them which is often the case for people that are experiencing severe stress apart from that they could also be heard talking about a possible Compass failure which had caused them to make this horrendous mistake but since the CVR only recorded the last 30 minutes of the flight and they had already figured out what had happened well before that conversation took place it is quite likely that those remarks were made to be captured on the CVR on purpose in order to try and hide what had really happened from the investigators anyway since a crash now seemed inevitable the captain also picked up the PA mik and for the first time on this very long flight explained the situation to the passengers now he obviously couldn't say that they had made a mistake so instead he told them that they had experienced a navigation malfunction and that they therefore would soon have to make a forced Landing in the the rainforest now the final report didn't specify how the passengers reacted to this but according to some eyewitness account two very different responses happened almost immediately a large part of the passengers stayed quiet and softly started crying while some joined hands in prayer whilst other passengers instead stormed the forward Galley and started helping themselves to various alcoholic beverages this must have been a horrific situation for everyone especially for the cabin crew who now had to prepare themselves and the passengers for a pitch black emergency landing in the jungle in the cockpit there was still not much action going on both Pilots were looking down in horror at their fuel gauges as they were now both quickly approaching empty so what could they have done here then well if you know that you're about to make a forced Landing there are actually quite a few things that you should be doing first of all you must advise Air Traffic Control about what you're going to do so that they can alert search and rescue resources then you obviously have to prepare the cabin crew and brief them so that they can maximize the cabin preparations and brief the passengers about what to do with the emergency exits and demonstrate the brace position Etc secondly the cockpit must be set up accordingly and a crash briefing should be done including what configuration to be used speeds to follow and what area they should be looking for yes I know it was Pitch Black outside at this point but the weather was also clear so by minimizing cockpit lighting there was still a possibility that it could could make out some features in the landscape or maybe even aim for some lights in the distance rather than just blindly flying Straight Ahead another thing to remember is that it is always better to execute a forc landing with engine power available that will maximize maneuverability and minimize descent rate so that once again the location of the crash can be more closely controlled and the gForce is minimized on top of that having two engines running would also make sure that all systems instruments and lights would be available to them so with that in mind the best thing to do would have been to use that last bit of fuel remaining to actually land the aircraft but that sadly didn't happen here the pilots also never told their traffic control about how dire their situation actually was Nor about their plans for forced landing and that was despite the fact that they likely had ATC contact via their HF radio up until close to the end the fact that the captain had guessed that they were somewhere on the L3 map could have been very useful information to share with a controller for example remember the golden rule of Aviation aviate navigate communicate well not a lot of that was being done here now the pilots did discuss how they were going to execute the landing but without actually looking for any guidance in their manuals which would have likely given them some valuable pointers here they decided to let the fuel completely run out and then Glide towards the landing concentrating on trying to minimize the vertical speed just before reaching the tree tops but with that plan they also ignored some very important technical aspects which will come into effect when the engines flame out as you will soon come to see at around 2035 local time the aircraft had flown for almost exactly 3 hours and the fuel was now down to only 100 kilos the pilots had started the auxiliary power unit the Apu to provide electrical power but of course that also required fuel in order to operate the left engine engine number one was the first to flame out and when that happened the pilots initiated their descent down from 8,500 ft they were now flying on a heading of roughly 165° still following the indications of those false NDB signals and only about 1 minute later the number two engine also failed that was done quickly followed by also the Apu shutting down which caused the entire aircraft to go almost completely dark except for the standby instruments in the cockpit and the emergency exit lighting which was powered by the [Music] batteries the only thing that could now be heard was the wind rushing by outside and the Cries From the terrified passengers in the back without any engine power the aircraft descended with around 1,000 ft per minute and the captain tried to keep the speed just above the stall speed as the trees started getting closer and closer below them the first officer kept calling out altitudes and other parameters as the exended and the captain soon asked for the flaps to be extended so that they could start slowing the aircraft down when the first officer heard this he selected first flaps one then flaps 5 but due to the lack of fuel in the tanks which normally cools the hydraulic pumps these pumps now started overheating as soon as this was sent the associated pump automatically switched off but the system still continued to produce some pressure through the windmilling of the engines but this shutdown also produced a hydraulic low pressure warning in the cockpit and when the first officer saw this he instinctively reached out and turned off the associated pump switch whilst that would have been the correct thing to do on normal circumstances in this case it meant that the isolation valve of that pump opened up which then completely removed the pressure from the hydraulic a system this in turn meant that the flaps stopped in position two and could not be extended any further fortunately the B pump switches were left alone which meant that there was enough hydraulic power to drive the flight controls which would have otherwise reverted over to something known as manual reversion where pure muscle power is needed to move the Ruder surfaces and I can tell you that that is really really heavy to do during the last few meters over the trees the speed was around 115 knots and The Descent rate about 800 ft per minute since there was only battery power available The Landing lights were also inoperative which meant that the jungle would have only been seen as a more intense Blackness now coming up towards them the pilots had no idea if they were going to land in water trees rocks or swampland all they could do at this point was just to prey and continue to fly their aircraft the landing gear was never lowered and it's actually quite hard to say which impact it would have had if it was normally it's always advised to extend the gear when landing on land since it will absorb some of the impact forces but but that's when the engin are actually working in a situation like this the gear would have obviously created more drag which would have caused a higher descent rate and it's unclear how much they would have actually helped when impacting the Treetops but in any case none of this was even discussed by the pilots at time 2050 the bo 77 finally impacted the tops of the 30 to 40 m High trees in the dense jungle canopy this immediately tore off both wings and pounded the underside of the aircraft causing the cabin floor to start deforming upwards without the wings the cabin just continued sliding forward down past the trees until it hit the ground with a mighty thud bringing everything to a complete stop within meters the aircraft had now finally crashed but this story was still far from Over the force of the deceleration during the crash was calculated to be close to 15g meaning that it was far beyond the maximum force that the aircraft had been certified to be a able to take this caused some of the passenger seats to release from their fittings and then fly forward into the forward bulkhead killing eight people immediately and seriously injuring others but as through a miracle 46 of the 54 people on board had initially survived the impact and as the worst confusion started subsiding they began trying to evacuate and also to help the injured when the doors were open some of the emergency exit SLS immediately deflated when activated as they were pierced by sticks and threes outside and some of the passengers who jumped out anyway then started running straight into the dark jungle fearing an imminent explosion but of course a lucky byproduct of the fuel being completely exhausted was that there was now nothing really left that could explode on top of the eight passengers who had perished immediately four more were critically injured and they just needed to be brought to a hospital as quickly as possible but how was that going to be possible no one knew where they were the air traffic controllers had since many hours by this point stopped all traffic that was going into their intended destination BM in order to facilitate their eventual landing and they had also on the captain's request reopened the airport at karakas but there had been no signs of the aircraft anywhere the formal search and rescue campaign started later during that same night when it was decided that the aircraft must have run out of fuel by then but where should they even begin to search there was no sign of the aircraft and the pilots had not given the controllers any clue about where they actually were at the same time in the jungle the crew and the surviving passengers had tried to help the ones who were still trapped in their collapsed chairs the captain was conscious and was helping to lead the effort but the first officer had slammed his head into metal part of his seat rest and was still unconscious at that point now everyone tried to do whatever they could but with the limited light and medicines available there was very little that could be done during the first few hours as daylight came the captain managed to remove the emergency locator transmitter the elt which is a small device designed to send out an SOS pulse on the emergency frequencies 1 to1 5 and 243 MHz but unfortunately this elt was not of a type that was activated by g-forces instead it had been designed to be switched on only after ditching in water and therefore had to be submerged in liquid this meant that the passengers and crew now had to use whatever little liquid they find from everything including melted I from the bar and their own urine to try and submerge the device in a bucket to activate it and after a while it actually worked one of the passengers were carrying a Walkman with them and with the help of that they could hear that the pulses were being transmitted in the form of interference in his headphones but by now they also had another problem lack of water you see even though the rainforest is thought of as a place with abundant water that's not always the case so they now had to try to do something about that luckily though it turned out that one of the survivors was a young forest surveyer and with his help a small expedition was sent out into the jungle and soon found a small stream of fresh water that was safe to drink and some of the passengers actually went there to swim a little bit as well meanwhile the search was now in full swing and satellites had been activated in order to listen out for the Emergency pulses that should be sent out by the elt soon faint signals could be picked up which led the search and rescue teams far down to the southwest of the aircraft expected flight path but even though search aircraft was sent out over that area nothing was found on the first day of searches after the second night in the wreckage the passengers decided that they would need to try and find help themselves another Expedition consisting of four passengers was put together to start walking and to their surprise they only needed to move a few kilometers Through the Jungle before reaching open land which had been slashed and burned into Farmland there they found a farmer who quite shocked explained that he had no contact with anyone on the outside but he thought that a neighbor a few kilometers away might have a ham radio he took one of the passengers in his car and then drove him over there and together with that neighbor they now started transmitting their fantastic story out over the Airways initially though no one believed him so he had to keep repeating his ticket number numerous times until someone finally took him seriously once that happened the whole rescue effort then quickly converged onto the site and with the help of those four survivors the crash site was soon located from the air this happened 2 days after the accident and 1,100 km Southwest of where they should have been a helicopter airlifted Rescuers to the site but since the light was then quickly fading the survivors had to endure yet another night in the wild but this time with food blankets and Medicine available and another three passengers had unfortunately succumbed to their injuries at this point and one who was later air lifted to the hospital also didn't make it meaning that 12 persons in total died as a result of this accident but miraculously the other 42 passengers and crew had survived not only the crash but also over 48 Hours Lost In the Jungle the investigation started immediately and it was soon made clear that this accident had been caused by a combination of a loss navigational Mistake by the pilots partly due to the unclear flight plan this had then been followed by various human factors induced mistakes and decisions who caused the pilots to fixate on their objective of reaching BM rather than trying to make up a new plan climbing to higher altitude and make full use of air traffic control and naves this was a true Testament to how easy it is to dig yourself deeper into a hole when the right thing to do is to get out look around with a fresh perspective and then start all over again obviously this type of event would likely not have happened today with the availability of GPS extensive radar coverage and about a thousand other tools but the principle stays the same sometimes it's way better to ignore the S cost just admit to a mistake and then focus on a solution instead there were several recommendations coming out of this accident the most important of which probably was the mandatory inclusion of a g activated emergency locat transmit on the aircraft and obviously navigation and CRM training for all VAR Pilots plus the change of that four digigit course description in their flight plans now I want to give a special shout out to Admiral cloudberg who helped me find a translated version of the original Portuguese final report as well as her excellent article about this accident I will link to her work in the description here below and advise you to check it out she's really great also watch these videos next and join my patreon crew if you want to discuss this accident in more detail directly with me and the rest of the patreons in our next Zoom hangout have an absolutely fantastic day and I'll see you next time bye-bye

Channel: Mentour Pilot

Views: 973,107

Keywords: true crime, crime stoires, storytelling, mentour pilot, aviation stories, trending, viral, mentour, full episode, varig, amazon, jungle, boeing 737-200, mentor, aviation crash, crash land, radio, morse code, travel, documentary

Id: VsT8Q0Fmdcc

Length: 46min 9sec (2769 seconds)

Published: Sun May 26 2024