Pilots detained in Brazil

[Guitar rocker]

nobody can make you say anything, regardless of whether the US Constitution applies or the Brazilian Constitution applies. If they torture you and you make a statement, what can I say? You're talking apples and oranges at that point. The New York times article written by the passenger on the flight that landed said they were photographed nude to prove that torture wasn't involved. If the Brazilian government is going through those steps to inusure that torture isn't a factor, someone yapping is on their own.

As far as squirming to get out of things? That's a lie or a fabrication...99 percent of my posts regarding law, treaties and the ilk are co-located with a citation to the relevant facts.

Just because I do not choose to wear myself down with entertaining ignorant trailer trash like yourself with "not squirming", that doesn't mean anything.

FNFAL, where are we getting this trailer trash thing all of a sudden? Are you not able to maintain composure or do you have to resort to name calling? You said that you only deal with relevant facts.....trailer trash is just another one of your assumptions AGAIN.

What you said earlier was that if you were pulled from a wreckage, that you would remain silent (while everyone else would tear it apart much as you do with respect to legalities in ANY accident). I simply said that I really doubted that fact if you were one of the Legacy pilots. I think that you would wimper and give in to your previous statement in this case.

 

[FN FAL]

What you said earlier was that if you were pulled from a wreckage, that you would remain silent (while everyone else would tear it apart much as you do with respect to legalities in ANY accident). I simply said that I really doubted that fact if you were one of the Legacy pilots. I think that you would wimper and give in to your previous statement in this case.

OK, I hate to be wishy washy, but thanks to you, I'd say that any time a pilot is facing authorities from foreign country asking them questions, they should just blurt out the first thing that comes to their mind. After all, those statements can be taken back later.

 

[Guitar rocker]

OK, I hate to be wishy washy, but thanks to you, I'd say that any time a pilot is facing authorities from foreign country asking them questions, they should just blurt out the first thing that comes to their mind. After all, those statements can be taken back later.

Greta Van FNFAL, your wishy washy to begin with. Who said anything about blurting out first thing that comes to anyones mind in this case? Wouldnt it be worse for you to sit there like an idiot with Brazilian authorities and plead the 5th? If your fate was pending, you would definitely cooperate and your arrogant hardline stance of remaining silent would be a thing of the past.

 

[Van Hooydonk]

It appears that Brazilian officials are starting to back away from their attempt to pin this solely on the American flight crew. I anticipate further back peddling by the Brazilians in the coming days.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-liair1017,0,7712689.story?coll=ny-linews-headlines

Official: Pilots, controllers caused Brazilian crash


Newsday Staff Writer

October 16, 2006

As the Canadian Transportation Safety Board finished retrieving information from three black boxes recovered from jets that collided over the Amazon jungle, the official who runs Brazil's airports said the pilots of both planes and air traffic controllers all contributed to the deadly accident.

Brig. José Carlos Pereira, president of Infraero, the Brazilian government corporation responsible for running the nation's commercial airports, told the newspaper O Globo that at least six people may have directly or indirectly caused the Sept. 29 collision: the four pilots of the two jets and two flight controllers. The crash killed 154.

He did not specify what the pilots of Gol Airlines Flight 1907 pilots or controllers might have done wrong. But he has said previously the two Long Island pilots were flying at the wrong altitude and not the one specified in their flight plan. And he did not elaborate about the controllers, but they have come under increasing criticism for not diverting the Gol Boeing 737 out of the path of the Legacy after its location transponder did not operate properly and radio contact was lost with the jet for more than an hour before the impact.

"It is obvious that it [the control tower] could have changed the plane direction, but what happened was not that simple," Pereira said.

John Cottreau, spokesman for the Canadian safety board, said Monday, "the downloading of the recordings was completed today" and the Brazilian officials who had come to Ottawa to oversee the process were heading home today.

The Brazilian official in charge of the probe said he will make immediate recommendations for changes in the way air traffic is handled in his country. Col. Rufino Antônio da Silva Ferreira, chief of Brazil's Division of Investigation and Prevention of Air Accidents and president of the commission investigating the collision, told Brazilian reporters Sunday in Ottawa that "there is always something that can be improved," including the air traffic control system.

He also was asked whether the voice recorder from the Legacy jet owned by ExcelAire of Ronkonkoma corroborated the statements by pilots Joseph Lepore, 42, of Bay Shore, and Jan Paladino, 34, of Westhampton Beach. In their depositions, they said they had been authorized by controllers to fly at 37,000 at the point of impact instead of the 36,000 feet specified in their flight plan. "The content only makes sense when it is cross-referenced with other information," Ferreira said. "We don't point out guilty parties. We find out the factors that contributed to the accident."

Canadian technicians transcribed the voice cockpit recorder on the Legacy and retrieved electronic flight data from that plane and the Gol Boeing over several days. The information on a fourth black box, the Gol's cockpit voice recorder, has not been been heard because part of it was dislodged in the crash.

Veja, a weekly Brazilian magazine, reported another possible cause. It said sources had pointed to a shift change in a control tower in Brasilia while the Legacy was experiencing problems. A spokesman for the Air Force told told Newsday the article is "conjecture."

Staff correspondent Martin C. Evans contributed to this story from Brasília.

 

[handlesaregay]

Awwww darn. It was so much simpler when we could just blame the Americans. A perfect example why the details of an accident investigation should never be leaked to the media. So when's the execution scheduled for the controllers?

 

[Van Hooydonk]

As promised...more back peddling

From today's Newsday, www.newsday.com

BRASILIA, Brazil -- An air traffic controller at the center that directed the flight path of a jet flown by two Long Island pilots said controllers had more than an hour to notice that collision avoidance equipment had failed and to make sure the aircraft was not flying at the same altitude as the Boeing jetliner it struck.

The controller, who said he was not involved in directing the aircraft, is among several Brazilian aviation experts who are now saying controller error appears to have contributed to the accident, which spared the private plane's pilots, but sent the Boeing into a dive, killing all 154 people aboard.

"It is always our responsibility to maintain the separations," said the controller at the air traffic control center in Brasilia. He asked not to be identified for fear of jeopardizing his job.

"In this case, when you don't know the altitude, it is very dangerous," he said. "I would have preferred to move them laterally, but it is always our responsibility to keep them separated."

Renato Claudio Costa Pereira, a retired Air Force major general who led the International Civil Aviation Organization for six years until 2003, said controllers bore the responsibility for clearing traffic away from the Legacy corporate jet.

The Legacy's transponder, which lets controllers know the plane's altitude, apparently failed sometime before the crash.

"Airspace Control should have the main responsibility for monitoring and controlling aircraft," Pereira said. "Transponders and TCAS [electronic collision avoidance equipment] are to be used as a last resort in any traffic conflict emergency."

The Long Island pilots of the Legacy, Jan Paladino, 34, of Westhampton Beach, and Joseph Lepore, 42, of Bay Shore, were operating under the direction of the Brasilia air traffic control center for more than an hour before the crash.

A lawyer for the pilots said they had been flying on autopilot since shortly after taking off from an airport near Sao Paulo, and never disengaged the plane's transponder.

Aviation experts say controllers should have noticed that the transponder's electronic "tag" was absent from their radar monitors. That would have alerted them to the possibility that the two planes were at the same 37,000 altitude.

A spokesman for Brazil's Air Force, which oversees the country's air traffic control system, declined to comment, saying the accident remains under investigation.

A Brazilian judge has confiscated the pilots' passports pending a criminal investigation.

Several influential aviation organizations, including Britain's Royal Aeronautical Society and France's National Academy of Air and Space, have said some nations have been too quick to initiate criminal proceedings following air crashes.

That discourages pilots, air traffic controllers or others involved in accidents from testifying freely about what they know, the groups said, potentially compromising efforts to understand how crashes occur and to improve air safety.

 

[cjdriver]

Latest:


American Pilots Were at Correct Altitude Over Brazil, Lawyer Says






By PAULO PRADA and MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: October 28, 2006
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct. 27 — The lawyer representing the pilots of an American corporate jet that apparently collided with a Brazilian airliner on Sept. 29 said Friday that his clients were at their assigned altitude at the time of the crash, despite a flight plan that specified a different altitude.
The corporate plane was a Legacy, built by Embraer, a Brazilian manufacturer. It apparently clipped a Boeing 737 operated by Gol Linhas Aéreas Inteligentes, which crashed, killing all 154 people on board.
The collision apparently occurred at 37,000 feet. Brazilian prosecutors have noted that the flight plan, filed by the crew before departure, called for that altitude, and then a descent to 36,000 feet before the location where the collision occurred, and then climbing to 38,000.
The lawyer, Roberto A. Torricella Jr., who is based in Miami, said the two American pilots had confirmed those details. But he says they also told him that when they took off from the southeastern city of São José dos Campos, where their new plane had been made, they were given a clearance by Brazilian air traffic control that superseded the flight plan.
The takeoff clearance called for 37,000 feet for the entire route up to the point of the crash, Mr. Torricella said. As a result, he said, the plane was at the proper altitude.
It is unclear whether testimony by Brazilian air traffic controllers, who have been interviewed for the crash investigation, supports that a takeoff clearance of 37,000 feet was granted. Telephone calls to Brazil’s civil aviation authority and air force, which are responsible for the investigation, were not returned Friday night. Investigators for state and federal police forces, who are conducting a criminal investigation, could not be reached for comment.
The American pilots, Joseph Lepore, 42, of Bay Shore, N.Y., and Jan Paladino, 34, of Westhampton, N.Y., flying for ExcelAire Service Inc. of Ronkonkoma, N.Y., remain in Brazil. They have not been charged with wrongdoing, but a judge ordered their passports seized to keep them in the country until a criminal investigation is complete.
Mr. Torricella said that the pilots were questioned immediately by investigators and the police, but had not yet been interviewed by the federal police. Aviation experts said the police might not be ready to do so. Searchers only recently found the 737’s cockpit voice recorder, which is being sent to Canada for analysis. There may be other evidence that they have not finished analyzing.
In addition, Brazil is holding a presidential election on Sunday, and the crash has inflamed passions. A prosecutor once speculated that the American crew had turned off their transponder, a device that makes the plane more visible on radar and visible to other planes’ anticollision warning system.