Decio Chaves Júnior was flying the Manaus leg, south towards Brasília and then Rio, a routine domestic run on a new Boeing 737. His first officer was Thiago Jordão Cruso. There were six crew and 148 passengers, and over Mato Grosso the airliner met an Embraer Legacy going the other way. Everyone aboard the 737 died. The seven on the Legacy landed at an air force base and walked off it.

That was 2006. The wreckage came down in thick forest near Peixoto de Azevedo, and the search took days on the ground — air force teams, local men who knew the tracks, Kayapó guides cutting in from the nearest road, while relatives waited in Rio and Manaus for names. Brazil spent the months afterwards with its air traffic system under strain and under review, and much of what followed went into the gaps: radio and radar coverage over the Amazon, more controllers, clearer handover between sectors. The 154 are why.