The New York Times, "Colliding With Death at 37,000 Feet, and Living"

          It had been an uneventful, comfortable flight. With the window shade drawn, I was relaxing in my leather seat aboard a $25 million corporate jet that was flying 37,000 feet above the vast Amazon rainforest. The 7 of us on board the 13-passenger jet were keeping to ourselves. Without warning, I felt a terrific jolt and heard a loud bang, followed by an eerie silence, save for the hum of the engines.
          And then the three words I will never forget. “We’ve been hit,” said Henry Yandle, a fellow passenger standing in the aisle near the cockpit of the Embraer Legacy 600 jet. “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.
          And so began the most harrowing 30 minutes of my life. I would be told time and again in the next few days that nobody ever survives a midair collision. I was lucky to be alive -- and only later would I learn that the 155 people aboard the Boeing 737 on a domestic flight that seems to have clipped us were not.

Learn more about the Gol Brazil Rainforest plane crash and the rights of the families of victims.