Please Help Pilots Stuck In Brazil

[Longhorn]

Nice work all. This thread is being un-stuck. I will keep an eye on it though and try to keep it on the first page.

lh

 

[CAL EWR B737]

From Joe Sharkey's web site:




FROM NY TIMES REPORTER JOE SHARKEYS WEB SITE www.joesharkey.com


Thursday, December 07, 2006

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE WITH THE USUAL SUSPECTS II



From Brazzil.com today. [Annotations by me]:

Headline: "Prosecutor and Police Try Last-Minute Maneuvers to Keep Pilots in Brazil."

By Roberto Espinoza

"Brazil's Public Attorney Office and Federal Police are doing their best to prevent that American pilots Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino, implicated in the collision with the Boeing 737 on Sept. 29, leave the country tomorrow as ordered by a Brazilian higher court of justice."

(MY NOTE: Note the subtle shift here to using the word "implicated," in conformity with authories' mood. The pilots have not been charged with anything, and no evidence has been presented to charge them with anything.)

"Failing that, they will at least try to leave a strong impression on those following the news of the release and on the pilots themselves." (MY NOTE: Air traffic remains a mess in Brazil as controllers, fearful that releasing the pilots will impute blame to the controllers (where it squarely belongs), threaten to bring the system to a halt over the year-end holidays, when summer tourist season also begins in Brazil).

(My NOTE, continued): The air-traffic situation in Brazil has now become a full-blown political crisis for the government, which has allowed itself to be backed into a corner by controllers and their military bosses, whose greatest fear is losing their control of the ATC system and its honey-pot of a budget.)

The American pilots are allowed by a regional federal court order to pick up their passports after 6 p.m. Friday. The Federal Police have scheduled one more interrogation session with the pilots -- for Friday. Anyone thinking what I am: Hail Mary pass?

Meanwhile, as I said, Brazil's air-travel system remains in chaos, with long lines and people sleeping in terminals all night. Air traffic control computers broke down in Brasilia Tuesday as controllers intensified their protests. Two major airports were shut down and operations at a third, Sao Paulo, were severely curtailed.

In keeping with a current style in journalism, the Associated Press today obediently takes out its steno pad and merely reports what a Brazilian press agency has been assured by the authorities. "Federal police discounted the possibility of sabotage, saying the problem appeared to be technical and that they would only investigate if asked by Brazil's military, which runs the system ..."

It ain't often I'm speechless but, uh ...

---


posted by Joe Sharkey | 7:36 AM

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

BACK DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE WITH THE USUAL SUSPECTS



You read it here a month ago that this would happen. Yesterday, as soon as it became known that a federal court ordered the release of the American pilots' passports by Friday, air traffic control in Brazil, already hobbed since the Sept. 29 disaster by a work-to-rule protest by controllers ... well, it crashed.

Last night, operations at two major airports, Brasilia and Belo Horizonte, were shut down, and operations at Sao Paulo were sharply curtailed, because controllers reported that "equipment failure" prevented them from maintaining contact with aircraft.

"A communications system in Brasilia inexplicably broke down, reducing the number of radio frequencies and making it hard for controllers to reach pilots flying commercial jets in some of Brazil's busiest air-traffic corridors," Brazzil.com reports, quoting the Agencia Brazil news agency.

Passengers are rising up. At the airport in Brasilia, stranded passengers put on red clown noses and blew whistles in protest, according to press reports. (And no, I don't know how or where they obtained a supply of clown noses and whistles on short notice. That sort of thing usually takes some planning).

"There has never been a collapse like this," the chief of the aviation authority, Milton Zuanazzi, is quoted as saying on the Web site of Folha de S. Paulo, Brazil's biggest newspaper.

Reuters quotes Franco Ferreira, a retired Air Force colonel and aviation expert, as saying" "There is no doubt this was intentional."

It was posited here last month that the air-traffic controllers might intensify their protests and threaten to shut down Brazil's air traffic system if, as has now happened, blame shifts from the American pilots and toward the actual cause of the Sept. 29 crash: Air traffic control.

The Usual Suspects, among them Wonderful Waldir Pires, have rushed in spinning like so many Sugar Plums from "The Nutcracker." Not to worry! they are hollering. This is just a mere technicality! Be patient!

This is insanity. I hope I can soon retire from covering the Brazil rabbit hole beat, and I shall, once the pilots are out and home. Hopefully, that happens Friday night.

But while I plan my retirement from Brazil (with hope and faith), let me quote a few comments on this sad and sorry mess by the respected Brazilian journalist Alberto Dines, writing in the current issue of the Brazilian press journal Observatorio da Imprensa:

"With each passing day, new evidence: the government, through the Defense Minister, deceived the Brazilian nation for two months. The worst Brazilian air tragedy is linked to a political scandal of great proportions -- all of this with the complicity of a large part of the media, which, once again, published groundless charges expressed by cunning and/or irresponsibile authorities.

Defense Minister Pires, Mr. Dines said, "politicized this tragedy from the very beginning. And now he is paying for that."


----

 

[CAL EWR B737]

Moderators.

PLEASE PUT STICKY BACK ON!


It was premature to take it off they are not home until they step back on US soil.

 

[NYRANGERS]

MORE BS from Brazil

Prosecutor and Police Try Last-Minute Maneuvers to Keep US Pilots in Brazil Written by Roberto Espinoza Thursday, 07 December 2006
Brazil's Public Attorney Office and Federal Police are doing their best to prevent that American pilots Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino, implicated in the collision with the Boeing 737 on September 29, leave the country tomorrow as ordered by a Brazilian higher court of Justice.
Failing that they will try at least to leave a strong impression on those following the news of the release and on the pilots themselves.
The Federal Police, for example, before giving the passports back to the Americans, will try to indict Lepore and Paladino for what they call endangering Brazil's air traffic safety. For this crime the Brazilian legislation calls for 2 to 5 years in prison.
The penal code that determines this penalty also says that jail time might rise to up to 12 years in case a plane falls down or is destroyed.
The Boeing crashed on the Amazon jungle killing all 154 people aboard in what became Brazil's deadliest air tragedy ever. Charges of involuntary manslaughter or even culpable homicide are also in the cards.
Comments (0) >>


Read the full article at brazzilmag.com

While these a holes continue to try to blame the Legacy guys....the big problem with their ATC system is not being examined......it's funny how the federal police are investigating the American pilots, but when thier ATC system failed yesterday, they (fed police) said they will only investigate if the Air Force asked them. Yet when the Air Force interviewed Jan and Joe they got a letter from the Air Force saying they were free to go...they got this letter in September.....GFYS brazil

 

[CAL EWR B737]

> Criminalizing Aviation Accidents Only Assures Repeats
> Brazilians Shouldn't Prosecute Humans for Being Human
>
> By JOHN NANCE
>
> Dec. 7, 2006- - On the clear, late afternoon of Sept. 29 , two
> sophisticated jets approached each other along an airway known as UZ6.
> Their combined speed was in excess of a 1,000 miles per hour. Both were
> at 37,000 feet over the Amazon jungle, and neither set of pilots were
> aware of the other.
>
> No alarms went off. No air traffic control warnings were given. And no
> rules were broken because both crews had climbed to their assigned
> altitude.
>
> In a micro-second, the left, upturned "winglet" of the brand-new Embraer
> Legacy 600 business jet sliced into the left wing of the Boeing 737. The
> Embraer's pilots knew only that an explosive force of some sort had
> rocked them, and that they now had a marginally controllable airplane.
>
> For the pilots of the commercial airline flight known as Gol 1907,
> however, the situation was far worse. Their essentially new Boeing 737
> was becoming uncontrollable. As the business jet they'd hit limped
> toward an emergency landing, the 737 impacted the dense forest below.
> All 137 people aboard died.
>
> Within hours of the crippled business jet's safe landing at an airfield
> just north of the collision point, the Brazilian government began
> investigating the accident with a painfully obvious emphasis on finding
> someone to blame, rather than finding an explanation for the tragedy.
>
> The passengers and owner of the damaged Embraer 600 -- held and
> questioned for 36 hours -- were eventually released.
>
> But even as another arm of the Brazilian government began to suspect
> that the crash had been nothing more than a tragic accident and not a
> result of any purposeful or negligent act by either set of pilots, an
> overzealous prosecutor was asking a Brazilian court for authority to
> confiscate the U.S. passports of the two American pilots.
>
> In the weeks afterward, Brazilian authorities confronted the truth --
> that their own air traffic controllers had made a massive human error by
> placing the two jets at the same altitude in opposite directions along
> the same airway.
>
> Yet no effort was made to present that evidence to the court and release
> the crew. Instead, the two American pilots -- both personally devastated
> over the loss of the 737 -- found themselves threatened with prosecution
> for 137 counts of manslaughter.
>
> Beyond the outrage that Brazilian officials have richly earned, Brazil's
> willingness to criminalize an aviation accident also dealt a serious
> blow to aviation safety worldwide. Why? Because most air accidents
> result from unintended human mistakes, and the only way we find out
> about such mistakes, and give ourselves the chance to change our human
> systems in order to prevent further incidents, is by asking surviving
> crew members to speak openly.
>
> But, if telling the truth about your own errors may land you in prison
> and ruin your life, who in their right mind would rush to give a
> prosecutor information that could be used against you? The result is
> that the mere threat of criminal prosecution for mistakes made in the
> cockpit (or the maintenance hangar or the control tower) utterly shuts
> down the flow of vital safety information we need.
>
>
> When a pilot flagrantly disregards rules or procedures or instructions
> and knowingly puts his or her passengers and the public below at risk,
> it's "pilot error."
>
> When a pilot fails because he or she is human -- failures such as
> starting a takeoff on a runway clearly too short to sustain flight (such
> as in Lexington, Ky., earlier this year) -- the problem is "human
> error." The two are markedly different.
>
> Human error problems account for more than 85 percent of all aviation
> accidents. Disasters often result from pilots being imperfect, making
> mistakes despite their best efforts. Blaming humans for being human is
> at once absurd and wholly ineffective in preventing accidents.
>
> The best way to prevent the same human errors from happening in the
> future is to understand everything we can about how the system supported
> the error, and then change that system to safely absorb such errors.
>
> Criminal prosecution of pilots for making human errors only shuts down
> the flow of information we need to get even safer; it does nothing to
> prevent recurrences.
>
> This does not mean that a pilot who purposefully does something unsafe
> (such as drink and fly) should not be held criminally liable. Subjecting
> such fringe-element airmen to prosecution in no way worries the 99-plus
> percent who would never do such things.
>
> But equating human mistake with crime, as some nations have tried to do
> too often over the years, is a trend that must be stopped cold.
>
> As the internationally respected Flight Safety Foundation said just this
> week in a joint resolution issued in response to Brazil's outrageous
> behavior: "...criminal investigations and prosecutions in the wake of
> aviation accidents can interfere with the efficient and effective
> investigation of accidents and prevent the timely and accurate
> determination of probable cause and issuance of recommendations to
> prevent recurrence."

 

[CAL EWR B737]

Av.Chedid Jafet, 222 – Block C- 5º floor
Rosana Marques
01451-001- São Paulo, SP Brasil
Manager
Phone: (55.11) 3094.2240

Fax : (55.11) 3094.2241
clipping
[email protected]
December 6th


G1 Globo On-line – December 6th


FEDERAL POLICE CAN ACCUSE LEGACY PILOTS FOR RISK TO AIR SECURITY

According to what G1 checked this Wednesday (6) the Federal Policy
studies, at the moment, the possibility to accuse the pilots Joe Lepore and
Jan Paladino for having put to danger the air traffic security. Lepore and
Paladino piloted Legacy jet that collided with Gol Boeing on September 29,
killing 154 people.

The penalty for this crime is of two to five years reclusion. In the same
article of the criminal code (261), is justified that, in case occurs the
fall or the destruction of an aircraft, the penalty can go up for 4 to 12
years. After the pilots depositions , the Federal Police can still decide to
accuse them for involuntary or fraudulent homicide. The FP scheduled for
this Friday (08) the deposition of the American pilots, in Rio De Janeiro.
As per the Federal Regional Court decision, the FP will have to return the
pilots´ passports until Friday at 6 PM (Brasilia time) . The passports were
retained for Brazilian Justicedecision.

The FP says that will only return Lapore and Paladino´s passports if they
sign a commitment term to answer to all the inquiryneeds. Even if they are
accused for some crime after rendering deposition, the pilots will be able
to leave the country and get back to the United States.

 

[XJTAv8r]

Pilots have now been charged by Brazilian poice

SAO PAULO, Brazil, Dec 8 (Reuters) - Brazilian police on Friday charged two U.S. pilots with endangering air safety in the crash of a Brazilian airliner over the Amazon rain forest in which all 154 people on board were killed.


Joseph Lepore, 42, and Jan Paladino, 34, both of New York state, were at the controls of a small executive jet which clipped wings with the Boeing 737 operated by Brazilian airline Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes as they flew between Brasilia and Manaus on Sep. 29.


The Legacy executive jet, owned by ExcelAire, an aircraft charter company based in Ronkonkoma, New York, landed safely but the Boeing plunged to the ground, killing all 154 people aboard. It was Brazil's worst ever air disaster.


The two pilots had been prevented from leaving Brazil since the crash. They were charged when they appeared at a federal police headquarters in Sao Paulo on Friday to make a statement, a police spokesman said. The charges carry a maximum sentence of four years imprisonment, he added.


The pilots have denied any responsibility for the crash.


Despite the charge, local media said the pilots were expected to be allowed to return home to the United States on Friday after their enforced stay at a Rio de Janeiro hotel following the confiscation of their passports.


Their plight caused a wave of protest from U.S. pilots' associations, who urged Brazilian authorities to conduct the investigation under widely accepted international guidelines for civil aviation and not as a criminal probe.


While officials and the Brazilian media were quick to accuse the U.S. pilots in the first few weeks after the crash, media attention has recently shifted toward air traffic controllers, who complain of an excessive workload, low pay and blind spots in radar coverage.


Investigators still have to find out why collision avoidance equipment did not work and why the two planes were flying toward each other at the same altitude of 37,000 feet (11,000 metres).

http://yahoo.reuters.com/news/artic...2-08_17-32-05_N08373523&type=comktNews&rpc=44

 

[Lear70]

Despite the charge, local media said the pilots were expected to be allowed to return home to the United States on Friday after their enforced stay at a Rio de Janeiro hotel following the confiscation of their passports.

I hope that turns out to be the case.

Better to be home fighting some charge in a 3rd world country than actually being forced to REMAIN in said country for the months to YEARS it takes to play out.

Definitely not going to Brazil anytime soon; hope they lose some tourist dollars over it.

 

[Princedietrich]

Story on CNN.com as well, posted about half an hour ago.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/12/08/brazil.pilots.ap/index.html

Looks like Brazil just is not going to admit that their controllers screwed up. I'm glad those guys are getting out of there (hopefully) because it's an all out call for their blood down there.

 

[JCJ]

Now is the time for ALPA and the other unions, NBAA, and everyone else who can to call for a boycott of air service to/from Brazil. It would be nice if we all could come together and be on the same team for these two guys.