US pilots in Brazilian mid-air collision have passports seized

The Times ^ | October 4, 2006 | Devika Bhat and Tom Hennigan

[MadIvan]

A Brazilian court has ordered police to seize the passports of two American pilots whose private jet is believed to have clipped a commercial plane that crashed last week, killing all 155 people on board.

Joseph Lepore, the pilot, and Jan Paladino, his co-pilot, were at the controls of a newly-built Embraer Legacy 600 jet when it collided with a Boeing 737 at 11,200m (37,000ft) on Friday, allegedly sending the larger plane spiralling to the floor of the Amazon rainforest, resulting in the deaths of all 155 passengers and crew on board.

Miraculously, the seven passengers on board the Legacy jet – all American – survived after their plane was able to land safely at a nearby air force base.

Judge Tiago de Abril in Mato Grosso state, where the Boeing 737 went down, said that police had seized the passports of Mr Lepore and Mr Paladino, both US citizens, as a "cautionary" measure while the investigation was proceeding.

But Maria Barbant, spokeswoman for the State Justice Department said that officials had acted "as a result of the doubts surrounding the case and the emergence of indications that the accident was caused by the Legacy."

She said the two were not arrested but "just prevented from leaving the country, at least until we know exactly what happened."

The two pilots arrived yesterday in Rio de Janeiro for medical and psychological tests as part of the enquiry. They face more questioning today. "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.

Mid-air collisions are extremely rare, and authorities are investigating why anti-collision devices, which were fitted on to both planes, were not able to prevent the crash, which marks Brazil's worst ever aircraft disaster.

Investigators are said to believe that both planes should have been flying at different altitudes and that human error, by the Legacy jet’s pilots as well as air traffic controllers, resulted in the Legacy flying towards the jungle city of Manaus at 37,000ft rather than 36,000ft.

That is the altitude reserved for planes from Manaus to Brasília — the Boeing’s origin and destination, en route to Rio de Janeiro.

When air traffic control realised the problem it could not contact the Brazilian-made Legacy, which was in an area over the rainforest where controllers cannot contact planes by radio.

However, yesterday O Globo, a daily Brazilian newspaper, reported that Legacy disobeyed an order by the control tower to descend to a lower altitude just before coming into contact with the larger aircraft.

Investigators are also trying to determine why the corporate jet survived while the more powerful Boeing 737, operated by the Brazilian carrier Gol, crashed. One theory is that the Gol pilot may have swerved at the last minute to avoid the Legacy, sending his plane into a deadly dive.

Yesterday one of the passengers aboard the private jet described the terrifying moments after the plane was struck by the Boeing 737, clipping a wing and spinning the aircraft out of control.

Joe Sharkey, a New York Times journalist who was on a freelance assignment for the aviation magazine Business Jet Traveller, told of his extraordinary brush with death as the pilots began a desperate struggle to bring the plane under their command, and of the heartache after learning the fate of the passengers on the Boeing 737.

Writing in his newspaper, Mr Sharkey described the instant his flight went horribly wrong: "Without warning, I felt a terrific jolt and heard a loud bang, followed by an eerie silence, save for the hum of the engines. I lifted the shade. The sky was clear; the sun low in the sky. The rainforest went on for ever. 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."

As he stared out of the window it became clear that the situation was worsening. Rivets started to come loose and the edge of the wing began to peel back. The plane started to lose speed.

The pilots, whose calm in the crisis was praised by Mr Sharkey, scanned maps and searched for a landing place in what is one of the world’s most isolated regions. "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. 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."

Then the pilots spotted a Brazilian air force base hidden in the jungle and managed to make an emergency landing. Several hours after their own near-brush with death, jokes about the close call turned to tears as Mr Sharkey and his fellow travellers were told of the Boeing’s fatal crash.

[Owen]

FYI, if the transponder was off, the ground control people would not easily be able to know the plane's altitude and so much of this story would be bogus. Transponders transmit altitudes -- or they used to. Hope I'm not badly out of date on this.

[bboop]

Maybe we are talking about who to sue.

[rrrod]

WAITAMINUTE! They can keep the journalist from the NYT and let the pilots go......problem solved.

[VeniVidiVici]

However, yesterday O Globo, a daily Brazilian newspaper, reported that Legacy disobeyed an order by the control tower to descend to a lower altitude just before coming into contact with the larger aircraft.

They're being setup already.

So how did they get assigned to 37,000ft? And why would they ignore an order to descend?

[grjr21]

They're being setup already.


It's not inconceivable that they are at fault.

I'd like to know who did the pilots work for and how familiar were they with that plane

My father loves to tell the a story about a  DC-3 that he worked on in the sixties .He spent four months of  12 hour days converting it from an executive plane to an airborne magnetometer and photo platform for a job in Africa .Only to have the hired ferry pilots crash it on takeoff .

[VeniVidiVici]

No, it's not inconceivable that they are at fault, but they will be blamed regardless.

Oh, and if the trasnponder wasn't lit, then how did ATC know the altitude?

[Brian Allen]

<< Did they reply to the order? Did they hear it? >>

Good Lord, b4. What on Earth do you think gives you the right to insert a little intelligence and a note of caution among this thread's almost uniformly-asinine assumptions and near-hysterical speculations?

[U S Army EOD]

The article said no one panicked, but then again, I wasn't on board.

[zipper]

They already have been blamed by the Xinhua news agency.

Oh, and if the trasnponder wasn't lit, then how did ATC know the altitude?

If they were close to a radar facility they could have gotten a secondary return, or "skin paint". This is not likely though--they probably would've had a second transponder and ATC would've brought the problem up to them long before this. Besides, they are not legal to fly at that altitude in RVSM airspace, which I'm certain this was, without an operable transponder with altitude reporting capability. If ATC allowed them to continue in RVSM airspace without an operable altitude reporting capability then they are culpable.

RVSM Requirements

The following requirements have to be fulfilled to get an RVSM STC:

• Two independent altitude measurement systems meeting the system error requirements.

• One automatic control system keeping the aircraft altitude within ±20 m (±65 ft).

• One altitude alert system with limits ±90 m (±300 ft).

• One secondary surveillance radar (SSR) altitude reporting transponder.

• RVSM compliant avionics configuration.

[zipper]

I believe it--they were too focused to panic.

Besides, there was no loss of pressurization, only minimal disruption to aerodynamics, and there were no injuries, so they only gradually came to the realization of just how badly the aircraft was damaged.

[cll]

Transponders do transmit altitude information and that information is correct if the airplanes both had the correct altimeter setting (to barometric pressure, which at that altitude has to be set at 29.92).

My question is: isn't the required separation at the flight levels (above 18,000 ft.) supposed to be 2,000 ft. not 1,000 ft unless the aircraft and the airspace controlling facility are specially equiped for the lower separation minimum?

Also, the article states that the area where the midair occured was a communications blind spot, which is common in South America and over oceans, so how could the pilots have received, acnowledged and executed a change of altitude order?

And finally, I never felt comfortable flying around Central and South America as many pilots and airlines down there consider many of the rules as optional. I wouldn't put it past the airliner pilots cutting some corners as well. Hopefully the CVR/FDR will clear many of this up.

I've been out of the business for over a year so things might have changed over at ICAO.

[zipper]

The reason RVSM requirements are more stringent is because the vertical separation for opposite-direction traffic is only 1,000 feet versus the non-RVSM airspace separation of 2,000 feet.

[cll]

RVSM, that's the term I was looking for.

[MindBender26]

>Transponders do transmit altitude information and that information is correct if the airplanes both had the correct altimeter setting (to barometric pressure, which at that altitude has to be set at 29.92).

Transponder altitude encoders are not adjusted by altimiter baro setting. Setting is hard coded standard and converted at ground station.

[cll]

Okay, you're obviously more into gadgetry than I ever cared to be. That's interesting since I always believed the two were the same setting.

[zipper]

The more I read about this accident, the more skeptical I am that the pilots were at fault. It's not inconceivable that they were at fault, but it's almost inconceivable that the pilots disregarded an ATC instruction. Of course this could just be the fault of the jingoistic foreign media sources such as O Globo. Time will tell.

O Globo also reports that the Legacy, which was carrying seven US journalists on a ferry flight familiarisation trip, disobeyed an order to descend to a lower altitude immediately prior to the collision.
 

[zipper]

incomplete link try this:

http://www.flightglobal.com/Articles/2006/10/05/Navigation/177/209677/Two+Exelaire+Embraer+Legacy+600+pilots+in+fatal+Gol+737-800+crash+have+passports+seized+in+ongoing.html

[Owen]

There is a report above that the transponder was OFF. That is why I questioned how Air Traffic Control knew their altitude.

For IFR flight I thought the cardinal heading rule is in effect with eastbound flights at odd thousand feet altitudes and west bound flights at even thousand feet altitudes.

As for being set up, that would make sense if there was money involved. Not sure why those two pilots would be ransomed. Is it an election year in Brazil?

[cll]

It is an election year in Brazil. They're going into a runoff now.

[grjr21]

According to a Rueters report


"Flights from here (Brasilia) to Manaus should be at even-numbered altitudes, like 36 or 38 thousand feet," Defense Minister Waldir Pires said in a telephone interview. "And those from Manaus fly at odd-numbered altitudes."

That confirms from this story  that they shouldn't have been there.


If there are any pilots here they may be able to verify this, and we know from  Sharkeys account they were flying a 37000.


The standard avionics  on this plane seem pretty impressive to this layman.



Also I wonder if the writers aren't confusing the Tcas system with th Radar Transponders