São Paulo – Marabá – Belém

On September 3, 1989 at 08:45 PM, São Paulo – Marabá – Belém experienced a crash involving Boeing 737-200, operated by VARIG - Viação Aérea Rio Grandense, with the event recorded near São José do Xingu Mato Grosso.

The flight was categorized as scheduled revenue flight and the reported phase was flight at a plain, valley crash site.

54 people were known to be on board, 12 fatalities were recorded, 42 survivors were identified or estimated. This corresponds to an estimated fatality rate of 22.2%.

Crew on board: 6, crew fatalities: 0, passengers on board: 48, passenger fatalities: 12, other fatalities: 0.

The listed crash cause is human factor. Following a wrong flight preparation and erroneous computer setting regarding the route, the crew computerized 027° instead of 270°. After takeoff from Marabá Airport at 1725LT, the crew was cleared to climb to FL290 and maintained heading of 270° for 40 minutes. The flight was then cleared to descend to FL200 by Belém ACC. However, the crew failed to find navigational aids and lost radio contact. Course was changed to 090 degrees as the aircraft further descended down to FL40. The crew then followed a river, heading 165 degrees. Because of the sunset and haze the pilot's had difficulty navigating. Also, they failed to establish radio contact on several frequencies and failed to find navaids in the area. After the crew found the NDB, both engines stopped due to fuel exhaustion. The captain elected to make an emergency landing when the aircraft crashed in the jungle about 60 km from São José do Xingu. Rescue teams arrived on site 44 hours later. 42 occupants were injured while 12 passengers were killed. The aircraft was destroyed. It appeared that the computerized flight plan used a four digit representation of the magnetic bearing with the last digit being a tenth of a degree without any decimal separator. A course of '027.0' was presented as '0270'.

Aircraft reference details include registration PP-VMK, MSN 21006, year of manufacture 1975.

Geospatial coordinates for this crash are approximately -10.8039°, -52.7358°.