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Captain's log: The sun is in the wrong position today. The Amazon River changed places overnight. The radio stations are wrong. It feels I am the only doing it right."

These passengers are definitely the most proactive crash victims I have heard of. They were sending expeditions, found water, found a way to contact authorities. Basically, rescued themselves.

From what I've heard, there was actually a passenger who realized they've been heading in a wrong direction long before the pilots did, by recognizing some landmarks. He was ignored.

"Months after the accident, the flight plan Varig 254 used was shown to 21 pilots of major airlines in the world during a test conducted by the International Federation of Air Line Pilots' Associations. No fewer than 15 pilots committed the same mistake that the Varig flight 254 crew had made."

"Lets see, did I input the wrong data, or did someone move a city of a million people? Hmmm, damned bureaucrats must have moved that damned city!"

It reminds me of when I was very young and I worked as a porter in a hospital. The surgeons used to go around to patients beds before they took them to theatre. They would write REMOVE THIS KIDNEY and DON'T REMOVE THIS KIDNEY on the patients back (or similar) with a permanent marker. They would ask the nurses and patient and the patients family to confirm.

I always thought it was very unprofessional and made them look stupid. Now I realise it was an amazing act of humility.

They then took the patient into the theatre and before disrobing them confirmed again with the nurses and the patient which side they were operating on. They then took off the patients gown and confirmed that their assessment from the day before matched the one from just now.

As a software developer we do similar checks called santity tests. Very basic quick tests to make sure nothing mad is happening.

All these pilots had to do was say "does the direction match the map and does the sun match both". Similar sanity check.

Flying into the sunset.
CAPTAIN:  "The radios aren't working correctly, the nav aids are screwed up, and now the freaking sun is in the wrong place."

Another Brazilian here. I remember captain Garcez was initially treated as a hero for his skill landing the plane. Later we found out how his arrogance played a huge role in the disaster.

A passenger named Epaminondas Chaves gave testimony in various interviews and documentaries that, being a frequent flyer of this route, he realized they were in the wrong place and tried to warn the crew. He was ignored. He was also one of the hero passengers who walked over 40 km through thick rain forest to find help.

Co-pilot Zille's interviews are numerous. What he depicts about what took place in that cockpit is so much more incredible that it comes close to criminal.

I know about confirmational bias, but flying into the sunset to the point you need to put on you sun glasses when you are supposed to go northeast is just mind blowing 🤯 I'll never get my head around this.

Lost scenarios like this are why we teach our students to "Climb, Conserve, Confess" if they get lost. Getting yelled at for poor navigation practice is better than being dead.

"The Captain was not worried. He was supremely confident in his navigational skills."
The First Officer, not so much.

The first officer's account of the facts (which have been consistently solid for all those years and nowadays has been considered a very truthful account) is quite different from what is told in this video. According to the FO, from the moment they realised they had mistaken 027 for 270, the captain used his hierarchy powers to forbid the FO of telling the truth on the radio and even mentioning anything in the cabin to avoid being recorded. Also according to the FO, the captain lied on purpose on the radio saying that they had a navigation issue and refusing to mention what the real problem was, which later contributed to the rescue delay. The compass failure bulls*** was also on the captain. Then, when it was clear that they were going to crash, the captain gave an absolutely bizarre speech to the passengers where he said stuff like "have a nice passing away, see you on the other side", then he froze and all the aviation that led to the somewhat smooth landing in the middle of the forest was planned and done by the FO. It is worth mentioning that some weeks prior to the accident the captain was involved in an incident where his plane was damaged when it hit something while taxiing, so he was under scrutiny by Varig and for some bizarre reason he tried to hide this awful navigation error in a twisted way to avoid further consequences (even if this meant choosing a path to death, what in Portuguese we would call "dar a vida para salvar a bunda" - giving up life to save the ass). After the crash, when the FO woke up, the first thing the captain would have said to him was that they "should write the report together", which the FO refused to.

Incredible story of how CRM is so important.
The copilot's career stopped too early because of this accident. He is now going everywhere in Brazil speaking about the importance of CRM to new pilots and telling his side of the story.

I'm speechless. If this was a movie everyone would say this is too absurd.

@mentourpilot your video is very precise. My name is Marcelo DaSilva and I was member of the rescue team (Para-Sar) that found the  airplane in the jungle, I still have many pictures of the accident and I remember that day like was today. Great job.

I don't know what part of this incident is more ridiculous, the fact that a missing decimal caused this, the lack of what you would think is basic navigational sense or the understanding that you're absolutely lost and going to crash in a rainforest but still not informing anyone.

It is, ironically, still pure dumb luck that they had a forest surveyer passenger and that they were actually just a few kilometers out on an open field manned by a farmer.

If this wasn't posted here at Mentour Pilot, I would think Hollywood is going crazy at it again.

imagine being a passenger two hours into a 40 minute flight. freaky.

The fact that they forced landing at night in the dense amazon forest and no trees actually hit the aircraft, except for the wings, is the most unbelievable part of this story for me.

I read once there were passengers who were used to take this flight often and found it weird that the sun was being seen on the wrong side of the plane, but were ignored. A sad and bizarre story.