Rico Linhas Aéreas Flight 4815

Rico Linhas Aéreas Flight 4815 was a domestic scheduled passenger flight from São Paulo de Olivença, northwest Brazil to Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state. On 14 May 2004, the aircraft operating the flight, an Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia, crashed into the dense Amazon rainforest while on approach to Manaus. All 33 people on board were killed.^[1]

Rico Linhas Aéreas Flight 4815

A Brazilian registered Embraer EMB 120 similar to the one involved in the crash
Accident
Date	14 May 2004
Summary	Pilot error
Site	Amazon rainforest, near Eduardo Gomes International Airport, Manaus, Brazil 02°54′47″S 060°12′12″W
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia
Operator	Rico Linhas Aéreas
Registration	PT-WRO
Flight origin	Tefé Airport, Tefé, Brazil
Destination	Eduardo Gomes International Airport, Manaus, Brazil
Occupants	33
Passengers	30
Crew	3
Fatalities	33
Survivors	0

Background

Aircraft

The aircraft involved, manufactured in 1988, was a twin-engine Embraer EMB 120ER registered as PT-WRO with serial number 120070. The engine, propeller, and aircraft logbooks were all up to date.^[2]

Passengers and crew

There were 30 passengers and 3 crew members on board the aircraft. The captain of the flight had 19,069 of flight hours, 5,819 of which were on this type of aircraft. The first officer had 11,927.10 flight hours, 4,637.10 of which were on this type of aircraft. Both pilots were qualified and experienced enough to operate the flight.^[3]

Accident

The aircraft departed Tefé Airport at 17:30 AMT (UTC−04:00) en route to Eduardo Gomes International Airport. At 18:26, 64 nautical miles (74 mi) away from the airport, the aircraft began descending to 2,000 feet (610 m) aiming to intercept the airport's localizer. At 18:31, in order to separate traffic at the airport's terminal, the flight, continuing its descent, was placed under radar vectoring and instructed to follow certain headings. At 18:34, the aircraft was given its last heading guidance, still instructed to maintain 2,000 feet.^[4] This was the final contact between the flight and air traffic control.^[5] The aircraft subsequently impacted an equatorial forest at an altitude of 550 feet (170 m), wings level, at over 250 knots (460 km/h).^[6] All 33 passengers and crew were killed.^[3]

Aftermath

The next day, at 00:10, after a six-hour search near the river of Rio Negro, local emergency services located the crash site with rescue teams arriving there at 00:28, reporting that the aircraft had been destroyed with all occupants having been killed.^[4][7]

Investigation

Investigators managed to locate the aircraft's digital flight data recorder (DFDR) and cockpit voice recorder (CVR). Due to the severity of the destruction at the crash site, the aircraft's digital flight data acquisition unit (DFDAU) could not be found. Both the digital flight data recorder. Although the DFDR's outer casing was badly damaged by the crash, the inner protective casing was intact. Both flight recorders were sent to Embraer for reading, but both recorders were too damaged for Embraer to carry out a proper reading. The flights recorders were then sent to the National Transportation Safety Board's (NTSB) laboratories in Washington, DC, United States, where an attempt at reading the DFDR was unsuccessful due to the recording head being dirty.^[8]