CAL EWR B737
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Please Help Fellow Pilots Stuck In Brazil Come Home
- Thread starter CAL EWR B737
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HelloNewman
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Dude, you need to back the truck up with your attitude! We should all back our fellow Aviators! Smart @ss comments like this do NOTHING for your integrity. How would YOU feel?
737: Good post, I contacted both Senators and hopefully we can help in getting the ball rolling! Has APA been notified? Seeing how one of "Their" pilots is being held, they should also step in with ALPA and make some noise!! Thanks for bringing this to our attention!!
Maybe you and your anger rhetoric can go down there and threaten to "kill em all" to get the boys back.
Tomct
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Anger rhetoric...ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I think that you need to step away from the crack pipe and re-read my post there Jr.
737Ewr, Thanks for the info!
CAL EWR B737
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Stuck in a Bureaucratic Jungle after Landing a Crippled Jet
By JOE SHARKEY
Published: November 21, 2006
FIFTY-THREE days.
That’s how long two American pilots, Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino, have been detained in Brazil after a horrendous midair collision 37,000 feet over the Amazon on Sept. 29 that sent 154 people on a civilian airliner to their deaths. The two American pilots and five passengers, including me, were on a Legacy 600 private jet that collided with the bigger Gol Airlines 737. Inexplicably, we walked away unhurt after an emergency landing at a jungle air base.
Mr. Lepore, 42, and Mr. Paladino, 34, are holed up in a hotel in Rio de Janeiro, where they are essentially confined to their rooms to avoid the public because the reaction to the accident has had a strong element of anti-Americanism. They work for ExcelAire Service, a Ronkonkoma, N.Y., air charter company that had just taken delivery of the $25 million jet from the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer. It was being flown home to New York when the collision occurred. No charges have been filed against the pilots, nor has any evidence of culpability been produced. Yet on Friday, a Brazilian judge denied the pilots’ latest request to have their passports returned and said they must remain in Brazil till the government’s secret investigation concludes, which Brazilian authorities say could take at least 10 more months. Last Thursday, the Brazilian Air Force, responsible for both operating the country’s air traffic control system and investigating aviation accidents, released a preliminary report saying it was “premature” to assign blame. The report confirmed that the Legacy was cleared by air traffic control to fly at 37,000 feet, despite a written flight plan that assigned it to a different altitude near the impact point. Air traffic control instructions always take precedence over a written flight plan. After the crash, Brazilian Air Force officials and other authorities made assertions that the American pilots were doing illegal aerial stunt maneuvers to show off the new plane when the collision occurred. I have no idea where they got that idea, but the charges got an awful lot of mileage in the Brazilian and world news media. I have consistently testified and otherwise stated and written that the Legacy was flying steadily, in an entirely normal manner, when the impact occurred. There is no mention of the aerial stunt maneuvers in the preliminary report. Officials from the International Civil Aviation Organization, based in Canada, and the National Transportation Safety Board in the United States conducted independent investigations. Their focus has been on whether the crash was mainly caused by a series of human and technological failures in Brazil’s air traffic control system. The Legacy, cockpit tapes show, made 19 unsuccessful attempts to reach air traffic control before the collision. And as numerous international pilots have told me, there are radio and radar gaps and dead zones, especially over the Amazon. Furthermore (and this is a fact that was omitted from the Air Force’s preliminary report), the Gol 737’s flight plan called for it to be at 41,000 feet at the point where the two planes collided. But air traffic control instructed the 737 to fly at 37,000 feet. After the crash, there was turmoil in Brazilian air traffic control. Controllers, protesting what they called unsafe working conditions, staged a work slowdown that caused major delays. Ten controllers at centers in Brasília and Manaus at the time of impact initially refused to testify before the Air Force, citing psychological trauma. They began testifying yesterday. The full truth will eventually come out, but outside investigators are questioning whether the Brazilians are dragging their feet to avoid assigning blame to their air traffic control system. Investigators from the United States and Canada are not allowed to publish findings before the Brazilian investigation concludes. But the aviation industry has begun to speak out. The International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations issued a statement last week saying, “Only contradictory facts, rumor and unsupported allegations have been forthcoming from Brazilian government officials.” There is “no valid reason for the continued detention” of the pilots, it said. Robert Torricella, a lawyer for ExcelAire, agreed. “Enough is enough,” he said. Robert Mark, a former airline and corporate pilot and air traffic controller who heads an aviation consulting company called CommAvia, said he was worried about the precedent being set in world aviation. “The Brazilians just grabbed these guys from another country and are keeping them in detention without probable cause,” Mr. Mark said. “Why aren’t more people expressing concern about the effects this could have, in that some other countries start grabbing people for whatever real or imagined reason?”
E-mail: [email protected]
By JOE SHARKEY
Published: November 21, 2006
FIFTY-THREE days.
That’s how long two American pilots, Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino, have been detained in Brazil after a horrendous midair collision 37,000 feet over the Amazon on Sept. 29 that sent 154 people on a civilian airliner to their deaths. The two American pilots and five passengers, including me, were on a Legacy 600 private jet that collided with the bigger Gol Airlines 737. Inexplicably, we walked away unhurt after an emergency landing at a jungle air base.
Mr. Lepore, 42, and Mr. Paladino, 34, are holed up in a hotel in Rio de Janeiro, where they are essentially confined to their rooms to avoid the public because the reaction to the accident has had a strong element of anti-Americanism. They work for ExcelAire Service, a Ronkonkoma, N.Y., air charter company that had just taken delivery of the $25 million jet from the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer. It was being flown home to New York when the collision occurred. No charges have been filed against the pilots, nor has any evidence of culpability been produced. Yet on Friday, a Brazilian judge denied the pilots’ latest request to have their passports returned and said they must remain in Brazil till the government’s secret investigation concludes, which Brazilian authorities say could take at least 10 more months. Last Thursday, the Brazilian Air Force, responsible for both operating the country’s air traffic control system and investigating aviation accidents, released a preliminary report saying it was “premature” to assign blame. The report confirmed that the Legacy was cleared by air traffic control to fly at 37,000 feet, despite a written flight plan that assigned it to a different altitude near the impact point. Air traffic control instructions always take precedence over a written flight plan. After the crash, Brazilian Air Force officials and other authorities made assertions that the American pilots were doing illegal aerial stunt maneuvers to show off the new plane when the collision occurred. I have no idea where they got that idea, but the charges got an awful lot of mileage in the Brazilian and world news media. I have consistently testified and otherwise stated and written that the Legacy was flying steadily, in an entirely normal manner, when the impact occurred. There is no mention of the aerial stunt maneuvers in the preliminary report. Officials from the International Civil Aviation Organization, based in Canada, and the National Transportation Safety Board in the United States conducted independent investigations. Their focus has been on whether the crash was mainly caused by a series of human and technological failures in Brazil’s air traffic control system. The Legacy, cockpit tapes show, made 19 unsuccessful attempts to reach air traffic control before the collision. And as numerous international pilots have told me, there are radio and radar gaps and dead zones, especially over the Amazon. Furthermore (and this is a fact that was omitted from the Air Force’s preliminary report), the Gol 737’s flight plan called for it to be at 41,000 feet at the point where the two planes collided. But air traffic control instructed the 737 to fly at 37,000 feet. After the crash, there was turmoil in Brazilian air traffic control. Controllers, protesting what they called unsafe working conditions, staged a work slowdown that caused major delays. Ten controllers at centers in Brasília and Manaus at the time of impact initially refused to testify before the Air Force, citing psychological trauma. They began testifying yesterday. The full truth will eventually come out, but outside investigators are questioning whether the Brazilians are dragging their feet to avoid assigning blame to their air traffic control system. Investigators from the United States and Canada are not allowed to publish findings before the Brazilian investigation concludes. But the aviation industry has begun to speak out. The International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations issued a statement last week saying, “Only contradictory facts, rumor and unsupported allegations have been forthcoming from Brazilian government officials.” There is “no valid reason for the continued detention” of the pilots, it said. Robert Torricella, a lawyer for ExcelAire, agreed. “Enough is enough,” he said. Robert Mark, a former airline and corporate pilot and air traffic controller who heads an aviation consulting company called CommAvia, said he was worried about the precedent being set in world aviation. “The Brazilians just grabbed these guys from another country and are keeping them in detention without probable cause,” Mr. Mark said. “Why aren’t more people expressing concern about the effects this could have, in that some other countries start grabbing people for whatever real or imagined reason?”
E-mail: [email protected]
Respect the process in other countries!
We should respect the Brazilian Laws just as WE want the foreigners to respect our Laws.
Let the process play out.
By the way, why did these two pilots have their transponders off?
Or did they?
Some say the did, others say they didn't. Of course the FDR is the final word. Any comments?
We should respect the Brazilian Laws just as WE want the foreigners to respect our Laws.
Let the process play out.
By the way, why did these two pilots have their transponders off?
Or did they?
Some say the did, others say they didn't. Of course the FDR is the final word. Any comments?
CAL EWR B737
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The pilots did not have their transponder off. Brazilian ATC has testified that they knew for over an hour the Legacy's Transporder Mode C was broken and never relayed this to the pilots. The voice recorder shows at least 20 unanswered calls from the Legecy to ATC. These pilots did nothing wrong just followed the instructions offerred by an incompentent pathetic air traffic control system.
CAL EWR B737
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