Ninety-eight passengers had boarded São Paulo Airways flight 375 to Rio that morning but the man in seat 3C had a different destination in mind. As the Boeing 737-300 roared off the runway, Raimundo Nonato Alves da Conceição sat quietly clutching a backpack with a box of ammunition and a .32 caliber revolver stashed inside. Enraged by the economic turbulence and hyperinflation convulsing Brazil as it emerged from two decades of military dictatorship in the late 1980s, the jobless 28-year-old had decided to crash a plane into Brasília’s Planalto presidential palace to kill the country’s then leader, José Sarney. “Oh God in heaven!” the Boeing’s commander, Fernando Murilo, reportedly gasped after Nonato stormed the cockpit, shot the co-pilot dead and announced his kamikaze plan. What followed must rank as one of the most bizarre and disturbing episodes in South American aviation history. For the next almost three hours, the pilot battled to save his passengers – and Brazil’s president – with an awe-inspiring display of aerial acrobatics that makes the 2009 landing of US Airways …

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