The Embraer EMB-720C Minuano, PT-RDZ, serial 720123, in the colors of TAS - Taxi Aereo Sinopense, photographed on April 4, 2010 in Brasilia. Photo by Marcos Ximenes, with his kind permission.
« PT-RDZ » - Tumucumaque, Brazil, 2018
BackgroundIn December 2 2018, an Embraer EMB-720C Minuano aircraft, registered as PT-RDZ, vanished over the Amazon rainforest near Tumucumaque, Brazil.
On board were seven Indigenous passengers from the Tiriyó and Akuriyó ethnic groups, including two children aged 2 and 4, as well as the 61-year-old pilot, Jeziel Barbosa de Moura, who had over 40 years of flight experience in the Amazon region.
The flight departed from the village of Mataware in Tumucumaque National Park, en route to Laranjal do Jari in Amapá. Approximately 25 minutes after takeoff, at 12:06 PM on December 2, 2018, the pilot reported a technical issue and declared the need for an emergency landing. Shortly after, all communications ceased.
PT-RDZ
The Brazilian Air Force (FAB) conducted search operations for 14 days, covering an area of 12,550 square kilometers with 128 hours of flight, but found no trace of the plane.
The dense forest and mountainous terrain significantly hampered search efforts. After the official search was suspended, indigenous groups and local volunteers continued ground searches without success.
To this day, the plane and its occupants remain missing and the incident is listed among the unsolved air disappearances.
The mission
The search for PT-RDZ is particularly challenging due to the limited information available about both the flight and the region.
Regarding the flight, reports in both general and specialized media describe it as an undeclared operation, taking place in an area where clandestine flights are still feasible. As for the region, the near-complete absence of ground transportation routes significantly hampers on-the-ground efforts, while dense vegetation further complicates aerial searches.
In this specific case, our research leverages Machine Learning to analyze radar (SAR) and infrared (IR) data across a vast territory. A newly developed FOPEN (Foliage Penetration) algorithm enhances these capabilities.
Our mission is to locate PT-RDZ by employing cutting-edge, non-optical FOPEN tools and methods currently under development.
