With the newsroom clock about to strike Minutes later she was 2, feet over one of the world's largest cities, racing to the scene of a road-traffic accident in her floating office - Globo television's specially adapted four-seater Squirrel helicopter better known as the Globocop. Within minutes the crash came into view below.
At the head of a gigantic traffic jam, rescue workers milled around the site of the accident. According to Brazil's National Aviation Agency the number of helicopters in Sao Paulo state jumped from to between and , making it the helicopter capital of the world ahead of both New York and Tokyo. The helicopter boom has transformed Sao Paulo into a real-life, South American episode of The Jetsons, with a constant flow of helicopters jittering through the city's skies, tiny spots ducking and diving as they make their way from helipad to helipad.
In the city of Sao Paulo alone there are helicopters, which can be seen day and night cruising high above its vast concrete horizon. Analysts say another 83 helicopters will join the city's fleet by And this cake means: buy lots of helicopters.
If you don't do that you don't move in the city. Brazilians often refer to Rio de Janeiro as the divided city, split between the impoverished hilltop shantytowns and the wealthy apartment blocks below. But the helicopter craze currently sweeping Sao Paulo is also a tale of two radically different cities.
Above, the space-age world where flying news teams trawl the skies for their next scoop and wealthy executives glide effortlessly between luxury condominiums, beach resorts and business meetings; below, the gridlocked mayhem where the vast majority of residents crush together in an orgy of congestion and motorcycle crashes.
