Why pilots of two aircraft on a collision course at a closing speed of 1,000 miles an hour wouldn't necessarily see anything before impact, and other mysteries of the Sept. 29 crash, as addressed by a commercial airline pilot.
People who do shortwave radio listening as a hobby, listen to pilots flying over Brazil, have known about the communications ''black hole'' in the Amazon for many years now. I am one of those listeners, who more than once heard pilots pleading to other pilots flying in their region for communication ''bridges'' because air traffic controllers could not hear them.
Joe Sharkey's work appears in major national and international publications. For 19 years until 2015 he was a weekly columnist for the New York Times. He is now a weekly travel and entertainment columnist with the global website Travel.Buzz, as well as an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of Arizona, He has written five books, four non-fiction and a novel, one of which is in development as a movie. Previously, he was an assistant national editor at the Wall Street Journal and a reporter and columnist with the Philadelphia Inquirer.
On Sept. 29, 2006, he was one of seven people on a business jet who survived a mid-air collision with a 737 over the Amazon. All 154 on the 737 died. His report on the crash appeared on the front page of the New York Times and later in the Sunday Times of London magazine.
He and his wife Nancy (who is a professor of journalism at the University of Arizona) live in Tucson with horses and parrots. He is working on a new novel about an international travel writer who hates to travel.
"JoeSharkey.com" is Copyright (c) 2006-2015 by Joe Sharkey.
1 comment:
People who do shortwave radio listening as a hobby, listen to pilots flying over Brazil, have known about the communications ''black hole'' in the Amazon for many years now. I am one of those listeners, who more than once heard pilots pleading to other pilots flying in their region for communication ''bridges'' because air traffic controllers could not hear them.
Post a Comment