Joe Sharkey wrote that he and the six other men on the Embraer Legacy 600, which landed safely at a military airstrip, 'bowed our heads in a long moment of silence, with the sound of muffled tears' when they learned that a Brazilian airliner with 155 people aboard was missing after Friday's mishap.
The Boeing 737-800 was found Saturday in dense jungle with no survivors.
Sharkey, a weekly columnist for the Times business-travel section, wrote that the US pilots of the Embraer, Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino, both New York State residents, were stunned by the fate of the other aircraft. It was 'clear the weight of all this would remain with them forever.'
The other occupants of the jet were executives from Embraer and a charter firm, ExcelAire, which had just bought the aircraft.
On a freelance assignment for Business Jet Traveler magazine, Sharkey was invited on the flight by one of the ExcelAire executives.
'We've been hit,' another passenger said a moment after part of the Embraer's wing and tail were sheared off without warning, apparently by a wing of the Boeing.
Sharkey described opening his window shade to see a 'jagged ridge' were the end of the wing had been.
'So began the most harrowing 30 minutes of my life,' he wrote. 'I would be told time and again in the next few days that nobody ever survives a midair collision.'
He said that the two pilots remained calm and the five passengers quiet, even as some wrote potential last notes to loved ones. Their landing was uneventful despite most of the jet's automatic controls being disabled.
Sharkey wrote that they were later interrogated by Brazilian police. He credited the pilots' evasive action in the split-second before what might have been a direct collision with saving the lives of those on the Embraer.
'I later thought that perhaps the pilot of the Brazilian airliner had also saved our lives because of his quick reactions,' Sharkey wrote. 'If only his own passengers could say the same.'
