From a New York Times obit by Sam Roberts headlined “Joe Sharkey, Travel Writer Who Survived Midair Collision, Dies at 77”:

Joe Sharkey, who delivered pragmatic advice to business travelers in hundreds of columns in The New York Times only to find himself at the focal point of a harrowing disaster in 2006, when the executive jet in which he was flying collided with a Boeing 737 over Brazil, died at his home in Tucson, Ariz.

The cause was a hypertensive stroke, said his wife, Nancy Sharkey, a retired Times editor.