Brazil airliner crashes near Amazon, 155 dead

Sao Paulo (Brazil), Sep 30: A missing Brazilian airliner crashed on a farm near a remote Amazon town the local mayor said.

The Gol airline passenger plane with 155 people on board disappeared yesterday over the Amazon jungle after colliding with a small plane, the company and news reports said.

Gol is a low-cost carrier that has expanded rapidly in recent years to become Brazil's number two airline and to offer flights to neighboring countries. With its orange and white colors and stylized casual uniforms based on US no-thrills carriers, it is an instantly recognizable brand in Brazil and one of its most successful new businesses.

Manaus is host to a number of foreign-owned manufacturing plants making motorcycles, computers and other goods in its duty free zone.

It is also a base for tourism in the Amazon, the world's largest rain forest, and a headquarters for several environmental groups.

CBN radio said at least 20 passengers were employees of Yamaha Corp., the Japanese conglomerate.

The flight left Manaus at 2:36 p.m. local time (1836 GMT) but did not arrive in Brasilia at 6:12 p.m. (2112 GMT) as scheduled, a spokesman for the Manaus airport said.

''The Air Force is in the area of the collision,'' Infraero President Jose Carlos Pereira, said on radio. Five air force planes were searching for the missing Gol jet.

This is the first major crash involving Gol, which was founded in 2001. In the last major airline crash in Brazil, 33 people were killed when a plane belonging to regional carrier Rico Linhas Aereas crashed in the Amazon flying from Sao Paulo de Olivenca to Manaus on May 14, 2004.

Reuters