Brazil Gol Airline Crashed

[Tony 1]

Looks like it was selected down

Could it be due to loss of hydraulic power?

[Pieter C. 5]

Thx Pieter...

 

If the landing gear was down.. Then maybe they were trying to do emergency landing.. ??

 

Anyone have the report of the black box..???

 

Black box of the 737 not found yet; the one of the Legacy is currently investigated...

[Pieter C. 5]

NTSB sends team to aid in Brazilian midair accident investigation:

 

Tuesday October 3, 2006

US National Transportation Safety Board is sending a team to assist Brazil's Aeronautical Accident Prevention and Investigation Center looking into possible causes of the suspected midair collision between a Gol 737-800 and an ExcelAire Legacy 600 business jet on Sept. 29 that killed all 149 passengers and six crew onboard the Gol aircraft.

 

According to Reuters, recovery workers began removing bodies from the crash site on Sunday, a day after the wreckage was located in a densely forested section of the Amazon rain forest that is very difficult to approach on the ground.

 

The 737's flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder reportedly have been recovered. The FDR of the Legacy has been removed for analysis. Photographs of the business jet, which made an emergency landing at an air force base, show the left winglet was sheared off.

 

 

[Teoh Z Yao 0]

Why would the transponder be off, I don't understand! Isn't that tossing dice?!

 

But doesn't that remind us of the fighter which lost a huge portion of its wing discussed not long ago?

[Naim 6]

AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT.

 

Colliding with death at 37,000 feet, and living

 

By Joe Sharkey

The New York Times

 

Published: October 2, 2006

 

SÃO JOSE DOS CAMPOS, Brazil It had been an uneventful, comfortable flight.

 

With the window shade drawn, I was relaxing in my leather seat aboard a $25 million corporate jet that was flying 37,000 feet above the vast Amazon rainforest. The 7 of us on board the 13-passenger jet were keeping to ourselves.

 

Without warning, I felt a terrific jolt and heard a loud bang, followed by an eerie silence, save for the hum of the engines.

 

And then the three words I will never forget. "We've been hit," said Henry Yandle, a fellow passenger standing in the aisle near the cockpit of the Embraer Legacy 600 jet.

 

"Hit? By what?" I wondered. I lifted the shade. The sky was clear; the sun low in the sky. The rainforest went on forever. But there, at the end of the wing, was a jagged ridge, perhaps a foot high, where the five-foot-tall winglet was supposed to be.

 

And so began the most harrowing 30 minutes of my life. I would be told time and again in the next few days that nobody ever survives a midair collision. I was lucky to be alive - and only later would I learn that the 155 people aboard the Boeing 737 on a domestic flight that seems to have clipped us were not.

 

Investigators are still trying to sort out what happened, and how - our smaller jet managed to stay aloft while a 737 that is longer, wider and more than three times as heavy, fell from the sky nose first.

 

But at 3:59 last Friday afternoon, all I could see, all I knew, was that part of the wing was gone. And it was clear that the situation was worsening in a hurry. The leading edge of the wing was losing rivets, and starting to peel back.

 

Amazingly, no one panicked. The pilots calmly starting scanning their controls and maps for signs of a nearby airport, or, out their window, a place to come down.

 

But as the minutes passed, the plane kept losing speed. By now we all knew how bad this was. I wondered how badly ditching - an optimistic term for crashing - was going to hurt.

 

I thought of my family. There was no point reaching for my cellphone to try a call - there was no signal. And as our hopes sank with the sun, some of us jotted notes to spouses and loved ones and placed them in our wallets, hoping the notes would later be found.

 

I was focused on a different set of notes when the flight began. I've contributed the "On the Road"column for The New York Times business-travel section every week for the last seven years. But I was on the Embraer 600 for a freelance assignment for Business Jet Traveler magazine.

 

My fellow passengers included executives from Embraer and a charter company called ExcelAire, the new owner of the jet. David Rimmer, the senior vice president of Excel Aire, had invited me to ride home on the jet his company had just taken possession of at Embraer's headquarters here.

 

And it had been a nice ride. Minutes before we were hit, I had wandered up to the cockpit to chat with the pilots, who said the plane was flying beautifully. I saw the readout that showed our altitude: 37,000 feet.

 

I returned to my seat. Minutes later came the strike (it sheared off part of the plane's tail, too, we later learned).

 

Immediately afterward, there wasn't much conversation.

 

Rimmer, a large man, was hunched in the aisle in front of me staring out the window at the newly damaged wing.

 

"How bad is it?" I asked.

 

He fixed me with a steady look and said, "I don't know."

 

I saw the body language of the two pilots. They were like infantrymen working together in a jam, just as they had been trained to do.

 

For the next 25 minutes, the pilots, Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino, were scanning their instruments, looking for an airport. Nothing turned up.

 

They sent out a Mayday signal, which was acknowledged by a cargo plane somewhere in the region. There had been no contact with any other plane, and certainly not with a 737 in the same airspace.

 

Lepore then spotted a runway through the darkening canopy of trees.

 

"I can see an airport," he said.

 

They tried to contact the control tower at what turned out to be a military base hidden deep in the Amazon. They steered the plane through a big wide sweep to avoid putting too much stress on the wing.

 

As they approached the runway, they had the first contact with air traffic control.

 

"We didn't know how much runway we had or what was on it," Paladino would say later that night at the base in the jungle at Cachimbo.

 

We came down hard and fast. I watched the pilots wrestle the aircraft because so many of their automatic controls were blown. They brought us to a halt with plenty of runway left. We staggered to the exit.

 

"Nice flying," I told the pilots as I passed them. Actually, I inserted an unprintable word between "nice" and "flying."

 

"Any time," Paladino, said with an anxious smile.

 

Later that night they gave us cold beer and food at the military base. We speculated endlessly about what had caused the impact. A wayward weather balloon? A hot-dogging military fighter jet whose pilot had bailed? An airliner somewhere nearby that had blown up, and rained debris on us?

 

Whatever the cause, it had become clear that we had been involved in an actual midair crash that none of us should have survived.

 

In a moment of gallows humor at the dormlike barracks where we were to sleep, I said, "Maybe we are all actually dead, and this is hell - reliving college bull sessions with a can of beer for eternity."

 

About 7.30 p.m. Dan Bachmann, an Embraer executive and the only one among us who spoke Portuguese, came to the table in the mess hall with news from the commander's office. A Boeing 737 with 155 people on board was reported missing right where we had been hit.

 

Before that moment, we had all been bonding, joking about our close call. We were the Amazon Seven, living now on precious time that no longer belonged to us but somehow we had acquired. We would have a reunion each year and report on how we used our time.

 

Instead we now bowed our heads in a long moment of silence, with the sound of muffled tears.

 

Both pilots, experienced corporate jet pilots, were shaken by the ordeal. "If anybody should have gone down it should have been us," Lepore, 42, of Bay Shore, N.Y., kept saying.

 

Paladino, 34, of Westhampton, N.Y., was barely able to speak. "I'm just trying to settle in with the loss of all those people. It is really starting to hurt," he said.

 

Yandle told them: "You guys are heroes. You saved our lives." They smiled wanly. It was clear the weight of all this would remain with them forever.

 

The next day, the base was swarming with Brazilian authorities investigating the accident and directing search operations for the downed 737, which an officer told me lay in an area less than 100 miles south of us that could be reached only by whacking away by hand at dense jungle.

 

We also got access to our plane, which was being pored over by inspectors. Ralph Michielli, vice president for maintenance at ExcelAire and a fellow passenger on the flight, took me up on a lift to see the damage to the wing near the sheared-off winglet.

 

A panel near the leading edge of the wing had separated by a foot or more. Dark stains closer to the fuselage showed that fuel had leaked out. Parts of the horizontal stabilizer on the tail had been smashed, and a small chunk was missing off the left elevator.

 

A Brazilian military inspector standing by surprised me by his willingness to talk, although the conversation was limited by his weak English and my nonexistent Portuguese.

 

He was speculating on what happened, but this is what he said: Both planes were, inexplicably, at the same altitude in the same space in the sky. The southeast-bound 737 pilots spotted our Legacy 600, which was flying northwest to Manaus, and made a frantic evasive bank. The 737 wing, swooping into the space between our wing and the high tail, clipped us twice, and the bigger plane then went into its death spiral.

 

It sounded like an impossible situation, the inspector acknowledged. "But I think this happened," he said. Though no one can say for certain yet how the accident occurred, three other Brazilian officers told me they had been informed that both planes were at the same altitude.

 

Why did I - the closest passenger to the impact - hear no sound, no roar of a big 737?

 

I asked Jeirgem Prust, a test pilot for Embraer. This was the following day, when we had been transferred from the base by military aircraft to a police headquarters in Cuiaba. That's where authorities had laid claim to jurisdiction and where the pilots and passengers of the Legacy 600, including me, would be questioned until dawn by an intense police commander and his translators.

 

Prust took out a calculator and tapped away, figuring the time that would be available to hear the roar of a jet coming at another jet, each flying at over 500 miles an hour in opposite directions. He showed me the numbers. "It's far less than a split second," he said. We both looked at the pilots slouched on couches across the room.

 

"These guys and that plane saved our lives," I said.

 

"By my calculations," he agreed.

 

I later thought that perhaps the pilot of the Brazilian airliner had also saved our lives because of his quick reactions. If only his own passengers could say the same.

 

At the police headquarters, we were required to write on a sheet of paper our names, addresses, birthdates, occupations and levels of education, plus the names of our parents. We were all also required to submit to an examination by a physician with long hair who wore a white gown that draped almost to his shins. We were required to strip to the waists for photographs front and back.

 

This, explained the physician, whose name I did not get but who described himself to me as a "forensic doctor," was to prove that we had not been tortured "in any way."

 

Again gallows humor rose despite our attempts to discourage it.

 

"This guy's the coroner," Yandle explained later, and then added, "I think that means we are actually dead."

 

But laughs, such as they were, died out by now as we thought again and again of the bodies still unclaimed in the jungle, and how their lives and ours had intersected, literally and metaphorically, for one horrible split second.

 

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/03/ame...eb.1003road.php

[Pieter C. 5]

October 3, 2006

Grieving relatives of 155 people killed in Brazil's worst aviation disaster arrived in the Amazon on Monday to fly over the wreckage as searchers tried to recover corpses in the dense jungle.

 

The relatives had earlier complained that authorities kept them in the dark about the search for bodies and the investigation into Friday's crash of a brand-new Boeing 737-800 belonging to Brazil's budget airline Gol.

 

All 149 passengers and six crew died in the crash after the plane and a smaller executive jet appear to have clipped wings in mid-air.

 

The Brazilian Air Force reported that rescue teams recovered the black box flight recorder of the Gol plane.

 

The air force flew a group of six victims' relatives to the crash site in northern Mato Grosso state, about 1,000 km northwest of Brasilia.

 

An air force spokesman said the idea was to show to them how difficult it was for rescue workers to reach the plane, which plunged nose first into the rain forest and disintegrated. Only two bodies were recovered by Sunday.

 

"They will be able to see the difficulties of the operation... The place is difficult (to access), there are trees of up to 40 metres (130 feet) tall," the spokesman said. "The debris is scattered so rescue work is even more complicated."

The disaster site was found on Saturday and rescuers had to rappel down from helicopters while others hacked through thick jungle guided by local Indians to reach the wreckage.

 

The smaller executive jet involved in the incident made an emergency landing at the Cachimbo air force base on Friday with five passengers on board, none of whom was hurt.

 

The Gol plane had departed from Manaus, a river port, tourist center and manufacturing zone in the heart of the Amazon, bound for Brasilia with a final destination of Rio de Janeiro.

 

The previous worst air disaster in Brazilian history was the June 1982 crash of a Vasp flight which hit a mountain near Fortaleza in northeastern Brazil, killing 137 people.

 

(Reuters)

 

[Tony 1]

Both pilots, experienced corporate jet pilots, were shaken by the ordeal. "If anybody should have gone down it should have been us," Lepore, 42, of Bay Shore, N.Y., kept saying.

Right...Now I really wonder how and why the transponder was switched off. Don't tell me new aircraft don't come with transponders fixed! Or do they?

Edited October 3, 2006 by Tony

[Radzi 2]

Any confirmation on the transponder-off theory?

[Pieter C. 5]

October 3, 2006

Searchers found dozens of bodies at the Amazon site of Brazil's worst plane disaster on Tuesday and started to fly remains to the capital as investigators tried to determine how two planes collided.

 

An air force spokesman said coroners and rescue workers were trying to separate human remains, but could not say how many corpses had been found. All 155 people on board the Boeing 737-800, owned by budget airline Gol, died in Friday's crash.

 

"They find separate remains, but it does not necessarily mean one body in each case. It may be several. We're talking about pieces in most cases," he said.

 

The first remains found on Sunday were being sent to Brasilia today, he said.

 

Earlier, aviation officials said more than 100 bodies had been found, but the air force, which is in charge of the search, could not confirm the number.

 

Meanwhile, two US pilots of a smaller Legacy executive jet that authorities believe clipped the Boeing arrived in Rio de Janeiro from the Amazon for medical and psychological tests at the Aerospace Medical Center as part of the investigation. They cannot leave Brazil while the probe is on.

 

The ExcelAire Embraer Legacy 600 jet, landed at a military base in the jungle at Cachimbo, after losing a winglet in a collision. None of the seven people on board were hurt.

 

Air Force commander Luiz Carlos Bueno said on Monday the two planes were flying at 37,000 feet, which means that one of them had abandoned its flight plan.

 

In any case, it was not clear why the modern collision avoidance equipment installed on both planes didn't prevent the accident, local aviation authorities said.

 

The black box from the Boeing will probably be taken to the United States for analysis, after which it will be compared with the data from the Legacy jet, made by Brazil's Embraer, Bueno said.

 

The US National Transportation Safety Board also sent investigators to Brazil to assist in the probe of the Gol crash.

 

(Reuters)

 

October 4, 2006

Brazilian authorities confiscated the passports of two American pilots on Tuesday who were flying a business jet that apparently collided with a Gol commercial airliner that crashed last week deep in the Amazon jungle, killing all 155 people on board.

 

Judge Tiago de Abril in Mato Grosso state, where the plane went down, said police had seized the passports of Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino on his orders for the duration of the investigation.

 

"That's a cautionary measure. If they returned to the United States it would require a lot of time and effort for us to collect their testimony," the judge said, adding that the investigation should not take long.

 

The two pilots, who were flying a newly built executive jet that authorities believe clipped the Boeing 737-800 in midair, arrived on Tuesday in Rio de Janeiro for medical and psychological tests as part of the investigation.

 

They face more questioning on Wednesday.

 

"They are being interviewed by the authorities and are giving their total cooperation with the investigation," said Glauco Paiva, a US consulate official in Rio.

 

The business jet, a Legacy 600 made by Brazilian manufacturer Embraer, was recently purchased by ExcelAire Service, a charter company based in Ronkonkoma, New York. The pilots were flying it to the United States when it apparently hit the airliner flown by low-cost Brazilian carrier Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes.

 

The business jet was able to land safely at a military base in the jungle. None of the seven people on board were hurt.

 

Air Force commander Luiz Carlos Bueno said on Monday both planes were flying at 37,000 feet, which means that one of them had strayed from its flight plan.

 

Investigators want to know why modern collision avoidance equipment installed on both planes did not prevent the accident, local aviation authorities said.

 

Brazilian news reports have offered a range of conflicting theories about the accident's cause, some speculating that the Legacy jet may have deviated from its flight plan.

 

Christine Negroni, with US law firm Kreindler & Kreindler which is not involved in the investigation, said all planes heading west in Brazil fly at even multiples of 1,000 feet, and those heading east at odd multiples.

 

"Since the American pilots were flying northwest, they should not have been at 37,000 (feet). That's very odd," she said.

 

At the crash site in a dense, remote area in the rain forest, salvage crews had recovered the remains of about 50 victims by Tuesday, including the airliner's two pilots.

 

"Parts of the plane and many bodies are scattered over an area of some 20 square kilometres in the forest and searchers have to scare away wild animals, especially at night, by burning large fires," an air force spokesman said.

 

A badly damaged black box from the Boeing will probably be taken for analysis to the United States or Canada, after which it will be compared with the data from the business jet, aviation authorities said.

 

As it often does, the US National Transportation Safety Board sent investigators to help with the probe in Brazil.

 

Grieving relatives were asked to provide dental records or descriptions that could help identify the bodies, as well as blood samples for DNA tests.

 

(Reuters)

 

[Pieter C. 5]

Seems, the Legacy crew is 'in big s#1t' :

 

Gol accident investigation focuses on Legacy

 

Thursday October 5, 2006

The ExcelAire Legacy 600 pilots in control of the aircraft when it clipped a Gol 737-800 last week have been ordered to remain in Brazil but have not been arrested while authorities investigate the cause of the accident that killed 155 people, according to press reports.

 

O Globo reported that the business jet ignored instructions to descend to 36,000 ft. from 37,000 ft. The government's news service said the smaller aircraft was supposed to be flying at the lower altitude. In addition, the head of the country's airports authority reportedly told Estado de Sao Paulo that the Legacy's transponder was not functioning at the time of the accident.

 

Brazilian media are reporting that speculation is centering on the actions of the two Americans pilots of the Legacy and investigation into possible negligent or criminal conduct has begun. Examination of the voice and data recorders from the downed 737 commenced Tuesday.

 

by Brian Straus/ATW.

 

 

[Seng Lim 0]

Yar, apparently there is saying the Legacy pilots switched off the transponder (turning their Legacy aircraft into invisible mode) so that they can perform demonstrate the capabilities of this brand new Legacy to their VIP guest passangers (remembered there's a journalist onboard) without being caught by the ATC.

[Rozhan 0]

I wonder. Switching off the transponder only makes the flight unidentifiable but still visible on radar, right? I suppose the aircraft's altitude is also unavailable with the transponder switched off.

[Naim 6]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N04331952.htm

 

Legacy jet transponder off in Brazil crash-report

04 Oct 2006 13:18:29 GMT

Source: Reuters

 

By Terry Wade

 

SAO PAULO, Brazil, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Brazilian authorities believe two pilots may have shut off the transponder in their business jet, rendering its anti-collision system useless, before crossing paths with a commercial airliner that crashed last week in the Amazon, killing all 155 people on board.

 

Passports of the two American pilots, Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino were confiscated on Tuesday and will remain with Brazilian Federal Police during the investigation, said Judge Tiago de Abril in Mato Grosso state, where the plane crashed.

 

"We know that the transponder was turned off," said Jose Carlos Pereira, the head of Brazil's airports authority, the Estado De Sao Paulo newspaper reported on Wednesday.

 

The transponder is a key component of the anti-collision system that each plane was equipped with. The planes would not have detected each other if one of the two transponders were off, authorities said. The transponder also sends signals to air traffic controllers with details such as altitude and speed.

 

"A pilot only turns it off when he doesn't want to be identified. The Legacy could have turned it off to try some air tricks far from the eyes of the air traffic controllers," Pereira said. "But it also could have been a case of mechanical failure. It's very unlikely that a plane leaves the factory with that problem."

 

...

 

Pereira of Brazil's airport authority, who was also a military pilot, told Estado that Gol's Boeing 737-800 was probably being flown on automatic pilot and closely adhering to its set altitude.

 

"The Boeing is like a bus. It never leaves its route," Pereira said. "With the automatic pilot its altitude varies at most by one meter."

 

...

[Tony 1]

Yar, apparently there is saying the Legacy pilots switched off the transponder (turning their Legacy aircraft into invisible mode) so that they can perform demonstrate the capabilities of this brand new Legacy to their VIP guest passangers (remembered there's a journalist onboard) without being caught by the ATC.

Tricks <_ plain dumb if they did that in open airspace. at least do it a restricted airspace airforce>

 

I wonder. Switching off the transponder only makes the flight unidentifiable but still visible on radar, right? I suppose the aircraft's altitude is also unavailable with the transponder switched off.

Yup. Should theoretically still get a blib on the radar, but no info.

[Naim 6]

More drama and twists.

 

U.S. Pilots Deny Turning Off Transponder

 

By TALES AZZONI

The Associated Press

 

SAO PAULO, Brazil —

 

The American pilots of an executive jet involved in a deadly high-altitude collision with a Boeing 737 have denied they turned off the transponder that signaled their location, authorities said Thursday.

 

Pilots Joseph Lepore, of Bay Shore, N.Y., and Jan Paladino, of Westhampton Beach, N.Y., repeatedly told investigators they never turned off the device that transmits a plane's location and believed that it was working just before the collision, said Denise Niederauer, a spokeswoman for the Mato Grosso do Sul State Public Safety Department.

 

...

 

"They didn't turn anything off," Jose Carlos Dias, the pilots' lawyer, told Globo TV. "It's nonsense to say something like this ... They had no reason to do that."

 

...

 

Authorities also were investigating why the small plane apparently was not flying at its authorized altitude of 36,000 feet. The collision took place at 37,000, where the Boeing 737-800 was authorized to be, Defense Minister Waldir Pires said.

 

"Why was this jet taken to that altitude? Was it a voluntary act by the pilot? Was it because of wrong information he received?" Sayao said. "That's the key question: What made the plane fly at 37,000 feet when it was supposed to be at 36,000 feet."

 

U.S. journalist Joe Sharkey, who was on the Legacy, wrote in The New York Times that shortly before the crash he saw an altitude display reading 37,000 feet.

 

The reporter also criticized air traffic control in Brazil, prompting an irate response from local authorities.

 

...

 

Brazil's air force said it investigated air traffic controllers' procedures on the day of the crash and found no irregularities.

 

The Legacy was making its inaugural flight from the southern Brazilian city of Sao Jose dos Campos to the United States, where it had been purchased by ExcelAire Service Inc., based in Ronkonkoma, N.Y.

 

ExcelAire issued a statement Thursday night saying it "believes the results of the investigation will show the rumors and speculation about its pilots are false."

 

...

[Azuddin 1]

I received this link in my e-mail

 

The picture of the crash site, wreckage and bodies is up on Ogrish.com today. If you not ready to see pictures of burned, crippled, dismembered and crushed bodies, please don't proceed .

 

I could provide you all with the link if you want it. PM me or request it for me to put it here.

[Pieter C. 5]

Not a lucky week for GOL at all; read this:

 

October 6, 2006

Brazilian low-cost carrier Gol said on Friday one of its planes slid off the runway at Sao Paulo's Congonhas domestic airport but no passengers were hurt.

 

Gol flight 1941 from Cuiaba in Mato Grosso state landed at the Sao Paulo airport at 6:05 a.m. local time (0505 EDT/1005 GMT), sliding up to a grassy area, where it stopped. A Gol spokesman said the plane skidded off the runway because of light rain.

 

"There were no problems for passengers, who were all taken from the plane later," the Gol spokesman said.

 

Sao Paulo's domestic airport, the busiest in Brazil, halted all landing and takeoffs briefly while Gol's plane was removed from the runway.

 

A Boeing 737-800 belonging to Gol crashed into the Amazon jungle last week, killing all 154 people onboard.

 

(Reuters)

 

[Tony 1]

Experts Fault Accusations Against Pilots in Brazil

 

By PAULO PRADA and MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: October 8, 2006

 

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct. 7 — As a technical investigation proceeds into a suspected midair collision between an American corporate jet and a Brazilian airliner late last month, air safety experts in the United States are dismayed by the speed with which a Brazilian prosecutor has made accusations against the American crew and signaled that they might face criminal charges.

 

A collision is believed to have caused the crash on Sept. 29 of a Boeing 737 flown by Gol Linhas Aéreas Inteligentes that killed all 154 aboard. The corporate jet made an emergency landing, and all on board survived.

 

The Brazilian press has speculated that the American pilots could be guilty of flouting air traffic instructions, and the investigating prosecutor has suggested that the pilots might have turned off an important piece of electronic equipment to escape detection as they flew at an unassigned altitude. The accusations have raised the possibility of a criminal investigation that interferes with finding out what happened, some experts say.

 

The Flight Safety Foundation, a nonprofit group in Alexandria, Va., issued an unusual statement this week asking Brazil to continue its “longstanding tradition of thorough aviation accident investigations.”

 

“We call on the Brazilian government to stay strong in the face of immense public pressure and continue to respect the integrity of the investigation and not rush to judge the various players in this accident,” said William Voss, the foundation’s president and chief executive, who emphasized that the purpose of safety investigations was to find the cause of accidents so that problems could be avoided in the future.

 

Adriano Alves, the prosecutor investigating the crash, on Monday obtained the permission of a judge to confiscate the American pilots’ passports and said the crew might have turned off the transponder, which broadcasts a plane’s altitude and is also used in a system that warns of impending collisions.

 

The corporate jet, an Embraer Legacy, was reportedly at 37,000 feet, and safety investigators said it should have been at 36,000.

 

Planes cruising on long-distance flights often prefer to climb as they burn off fuel so they are always flying at the optimal altitude for their weight to maximize fuel efficiency. It is not yet clear at which altitude the pilots were authorized to fly.

 

The problem with the accusations, according to John Cox, an aviation safety expert and a former safety official at the Air Line Pilots Association, is that pilots who believe they will face criminal charges may not be forthcoming in investigations.

 

“If you were the captain of the Legacy, and you had this prosecutor making wild accusations against you, would you talk to anybody?” he said. In the United States, while a criminal investigation may follow a crash, it is generally not at such an early stage of the safety investigation.

 

In a development on Saturday, ExcelAire Service Inc., the New York-based charter service that owned the Legacy, confirmed that the transponder on the jet was a Honeywell model that the Federal Aviation Administration had ordered recalled in recent months because it tended to stop broadcasting unexpectedly in certain circumstances. It was unclear whether the transponder on the Legacy had been checked yet.

 

On Friday, lawyers representing the husband of a crash victim asked a court in Brasília, the capital, to order that the Legacy remain in Brazil for now. They want to protect an asset that could be used to pay compensation to their client.

 

Paulo Prada reported from Rio de Janeiro, and Matthew L. Wald from Washington.

 

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/world/am...rld&oref=slogin

[Naim 6]

LATEST ...

 

LI pilots did not prepare Brazil flight plan

 

BY BILL BLEYER

Newsday Staff Writer

Posted October 9 2006, 7:49 PM EDT

 

The controversial flight plan for an American corporate jet that collided with an airliner over the Amazon jungle 11 days ago was prepared not by the two Long Island pilots but by the plane's Brazilian manufacturer, according to the pilots' statements to authorities.

 

Joseph Lepore, 42, of Bay Shore, and Jan Paladino, 34, of Westhampton Beach also insisted in their depositions that they had authorization from air traffic controllers in two locations to fly at 37,000 feet, the altitude at which the collision occurred.

 

Those details, reported in the Brazilian press and confirmed by aviation sources in this country, could bolster the the contention of some aviation experts in the U.S. and Brazil that the pilots may not be the only ones at fault. They say a series of errors by various participants, including the pilots, led to the crash of Gol Airlines Flight 1907 and the loss of all 154 aboard.

 

...

 

read rest of story here: http://snipurl.com/ympb

[Pieter C. 5]

Some more aftermath information:

 

Crash Blamed For Brazil's Air Control Chaos

 

November 2, 2006

A slow-down by air traffic controllers has caused huge delays in domestic air travel in Brazil this week and a staff representative said strain after a major air crash was fueling the crisis.

 

Travelers faced delays of up to five hours on Wednesday, the eve of a public holiday, in key Brazilian airports, as well as flight cancellations.

 

The controllers' action also affected the work of Congress on Tuesday as deputies failed to arrive in the capital Brasilia in time for an important hearing by the central banker.

 

Wellington Rodrigues, head of the Air Traffic Controllers' Association in Brasilia, said the suspension of 10 of his colleagues after a passenger plane crashed over the Amazon on September 29 had boosted their work load.

 

In Brazil's worst air crash, all 154 people on board a Boeing 737-800 owned by low-cost airline Gol were killed when it went down after clipping wings with a smaller business jet operated by US firm ExcelAire. The other jet landed safely.

 

"The crisis came because the number of air controllers in the country is insufficient and with the accident, 10 controllers who were on duty then were suspended," Rodrigues said.

 

Last Friday controllers in Brasilia, the key control hub, agreed to handle no more than 14 planes at a time, which is considered an international standard. Some controllers say they have had to handle 20 planes at a time in peak hours of their six hour shifts.

 

Brigadier Mauro Gandra, former aviation minister and a consultant, said the crisis underscored problems in the sector after local air traffic soared 19 percent last year and 20 percent in 2006, causing more strain on controllers. That was exacerbated by the crash and the investigation that followed.

 

"The controllers feel threatened by the investigation," he said.

 

Black boxes from the two planes have been analyzed in Canada but authorities have yet to publish the final report and conclude the investigation.

 

The official Agencia Brasil news agency said the Air Force had refused to allow the questioning of the suspended controllers until they had completed a course of psychiatric treatment.

 

Meanwhile, two US citizens who piloted the smaller jet and have been prevented from leaving Brazil since the crash, were preparing to appeal the ban on their return home, claiming that the month long investigation was at a dead end.

 

As for the new crisis, the government has announced the hiring of more than 60 new controllers, call-up of military controllers from the reserve and a reduction of traffic to be handled by the Brasilia control center.

 

Brazil has about 2,700 controllers. They say they are overworked, overstressed and underpaid, with monthly salaries of about USD$800, and have to work elsewhere during their two day breaks from the air control to make ends meet.

 

(Reuters)

 

[Pieter C. 5]

Brazil Crash Report Could Benefit US Pilots

 

November 19, 2006

Lawyers for two US pilots being investigated over Brazil's worst air disaster demanded on Friday their release from Brazil, saying the crash report showed their jet was flying at the proper altitude.

 

Police seized the passports of Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino a few days after the September 29 crash of a Boeing passenger jet, which clipped wings in midair with a smaller jet piloted by the Americans for ExcelAire charter service of New York.

 

All 154 people aboard the Boeing, flown by Brazilian airline Gol, died as it crashed into the Amazon forest. The smaller Embraer Legacy jet lost a winglet, but landed safely.

 

"We are challenging the continued retention of their passports, which is in violation of the law," Theo Dias, a criminal defense counsel for the pilots said.

 

He said Brazilian law did not allow people to be detained in the case of a suspected unintentional crime and forbade unequal treatment of Brazilians and foreigners. The two Americans were the only ones involved in the incident to have their freedom of movement restricted.

 

The government on Thursday released its first official report on the crash, which did not assign blame for the disaster. It said pilots and air traffic controllers made a flurry of unanswered calls to each other before the crash.

 

Investigators still need to find out why the dozens of radio calls went unanswered, why neither plane's anti-collision system issued alerts, and why they flew toward each other at 37,000 feet (11,280 metres).

 

Col. Rufino Antonio da Silva Ferreira, the head of the federal investigation, said the pilots should be freed, although only courts have the authority to let them go.

 

Robert Torricella, another lawyer for the pilots, said he saw the report as giving "positive signs" for the American pilots.

 

"The report proves what we have been saying all along -- that there has been a number of false accusations about Joe and Jan," he said, referring to previous comments by some officials the Legacy pilots were performing aerial stunts before the crash to test the new plane.

 

"The report proves that the Legacy was flying at the proper altitude," Torricella said.

 

He said that according to the report, air traffic control knew the Legacy maintained an altitude of 37,000 feet for at least 10 minutes after it passed the control hub in Brasilia and did not instruct it to change altitude.

 

The two pilots have been staying in a luxury Rio de Janeiro hotel for more than a month while they await the outcome of the investigation.

 

"Things are difficult for Joe and Jan right now and they are getting more and more difficult as time passes, both for them and their families. They are separated from their wives. Joe's children have not seen their father in almost two months. This situation is entirely unjust," Torricella said.

 

Dias said there was no reason for keeping them detained in Brazil as the two "have every intention of cooperating with these investigations because they want to clear their names."

 

The US Air Line Pilots Association and the International Federation of Air Line Pilots Associations issued a statement urging their release.

 

(Reuters)

 

[Pieter C. 5]

Finally :

 

Brazil To Let US Pilots Go After Crash Probe

 

December 5, 2006

Two US pilots should be allowed to go home after being forced to stay in Brazil for more than two months over their role in the country's worst air disaster, a Brazilian court ruled on Tuesday.

 

A court statement said Joseph Lepore, 42, and Jan Paladino, 34, would get their passports back after 72 hours, during which the police would take further testimony. The two must promise to show up when needed for the investigation and legal process.

 

"The measure of restricting the freedom of movement for foreigners is not backed by the domestic legal system," the statement said after the court ruled in favor of a writ seeking relief from unlawful detainment.

 

The pilots will likely return home, their lawyers said.

 

The pilots, both from New York state, have denied any responsibility for the September 29 crash that killed 154 people, but had to stay in Brazil without being charged. They were put up in a Rio de Janeiro hotel.

 

The Legacy executive jet they piloted for New York-based ExcelAire clipped wings in mid-air with a Boeing passenger jet flown by Brazil's Gol airline. The jet crashed into the Amazon jungle and everyone aboard died. The smaller jet lost a winglet but landed safely.

 

Police seized the pilots' passports after a local judge ruled they must stay in Brazil while an investigation was conducted.

 

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

 

"The judges noted that collecting technical evidence can take a long time, 10 months or even more. It wouldn't be appropriate to keep them here the entire time," a court spokesman said.

 

While officials and the Brazilian media were quick to accuse the US 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).

 

(Reuters)

 

Meanwhile............

 

Brazil Closes Three Airports As Traffic Snarls

 

December 6, 2006

Brazilian aviation officials shut three major airports and canceled dozens of flights on Tuesday evening, in another day of chaos in the domestic aviation industry.

 

Officials stopped all flights from taking off from Brasilia, Belo Horizonte and Congonhas Airport in Sao Paulo after an equipment failure early in the day caused air traffic controllers to lose contact with planes.

 

By the time the problem was solved, airports were packed and more than 300 flights were delayed.

 

Civil aviation authorities said they were investigating the cause of Tuesday's equipment failure.

 

Brazil's aviation system has had several instances of major delays in recent months due to foul weather and a work slowdown by air traffic controllers, who complain they are overworked.

 

(Reuters)

 

Looks like ATC is a mess overthere...

 

[Pieter C. 5]

The GOL crash is turning sour, read this:

 

Brazil Air Traffic In Chaos

 

December 6, 2006

Air traffic in Brazil has been chaotic since a Boeing 737 crashed on September 29, exposing major problems in the country's aviation system and forcing the temporary shutdown of three airports amid its worst-ever aviation crisis.

 

The accident took place when the Boeing, operated by Brazilian carrier Gol Linhas Aereas, and a business jet collided in mid-air. The Boeing crashed nearby, killing 154 people.

 

Since the crash, the deadliest in Brazilian history, air traffic controllers have organized work slowdowns to protest poor pay and long hours, bringing air travel to a near-halt several times in the last two months.

 

Controllers have said their work load increased after the crash, with some saying they sometimes handled as many as 20 flights simultaneously.

 

The aviation crisis has also led to accusations of sabotage by disgruntled controllers, prompting Brazil's Congress to call a special session for next week to address the situation.

 

The crisis came to a head on Tuesday night, when officials were forced to temporarily close three major airports and cancel dozens of flights because of an apparent equipment failure that caused controllers to lose contact with planes.

 

"There has never been a day like this in Brazilian aviation," said Milton Zuanazzi, the aviation authority chief.

 

Officials blamed the breakdown on a technical glitch. But aviation experts questioned that explanation, saying the collapse may have been the result of sabotage by controllers who feel they are being made scapegoats for the Gol crash.

 

"There is no doubt that this was intentional," said Franco Ferreira, a retired Air Force colonel and aviation expert, on Wednesday in a radio interview.

 

Dozens more flights were delayed or canceled again on Wednesday, angering travelers around the country. In Brasilia, passengers protested the delays by donning red clown noses and blowing whistles as they waited in long lines.

 

Delays and cancellations have become commonplace since the Gol crash, prompting an avalanche of criticism of Brazil's civil-aviation system, which is run by the military. With air travel in Brazil growing at a double-digit pace, critics say the government has not done enough to keep up with demand.

 

As the crisis heated up late last month, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva fired the commander of the air traffic control system. But the situation has worsened, bringing calls for the resignation of Defense Minister Waldir Pires.

 

Pires is scheduled to go before a congressional panel next Wednesday to discuss the crisis.

 

Airlines are concerned that the situation could discourage travelers from flying.

 

"If things stay like this, traveling by plane is going to be like going to the dentist," said Marco Antonio Bologna, the chief executive of Brazilian airline TAM, recently.

 

(Reuters)

 

...20 planes simutaneously: tell that to an O'Hare controller

 

[Teoh Z Yao 0]

Send in controllers to help Brazil, can we?

[Pieter C. 5]

You speak Portuguese ?

 

Lot's of conversation is done there in that language, esp. when it concerns domestic flights