São José do Xingu is a
municipality
A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate.
The term ''municipality' ...
in the
state of
Mato Grosso, in the
Central-West Region of
Brazil
Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...
.
Plane crash
On 3 September 1989, a
Varig Boeing 737-241 registration PP-VMK, operating
flight 254 flying from
São Paulo-Guarulhos to
Belém-Val de Cães with intermediate stops, crashed near São José do Xingu while on the last leg of the flight between
Marabá and Belém due to a
pilot navigation
Navigation is a field of study that focuses on the process of monitoring and controlling the motion, movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another.Bowditch, 2003:799. The field of navigation includes four general categories: land navig ...
al error, which led to
fuel exhaustion and a subsequent
belly landing into the jungle, 40 km from São José do Xingu. Out of 54 occupants, there were 13 fatalities, all of them passengers. Only 7 of the passengers died as a direct result of the crash, the other 6 occupants died after the crash, due to injuries and at least partially caused by the delayed arrival of rescue resources. Since the flight crashed about 1.200 km away from its intended destination, caused by flying into the wrong direction immediately after take-off - first west, then south, instead of the required north-eastern direction - the search and rescue operations focused on a completely wrong region, much closer to the actual destination of Belém. The survivors were discovered only after 4 of the occupants walked for 3 hours through the forest to find help.
See also
*
List of municipalities in Mato Grosso
References
External links
Municipality of São José do Xingu
Municipalities in Mato Grosso
{{MatoGrosso-geo-stub