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Posted on 12/07/2006 11:23:16 AM PST by billorites
Two U.S. 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 Sept. 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 airlines. The jet plunged 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 U.S. 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 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).
From the title, it seemed that Brazil was going the way of Venezuela, even though they are a [nominal] ally. But given the content of the article, if they were imprisoned, that would be reasonable, if not necessarily the proper decision.
When I was reading the Brazilian press reports shortly after the accident, leaks from the preliminary investigation indicated that the American pilots were hot-rodding.
If that were the case, they should be held fully accountable for the 154 lives lost.
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Natural to want to blame someone, anyone, but it is only right that these men be freed. They were directed to the incorrect path.
ping?
If you want on or off my aerospace ping list, please contact me by Freep mail.
Audio recordings show the Brazilian ground controllers redirecting the American plane to 37,000 feet. Sorry I don't have a link, but it was on Free Republic.
Audio recordings show the Brazilian ground controllers redirecting the American plane to 37,000 feet.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1731102/posts
If they were directed on an opposing course at the same altitude, that is a failure of the Air Traffic Control system. There may have been other failures along the way, as there often are in such cases. But the big screw-up is when ATC put two aircraft on a collision course.
Rep. Pete King made this happen.
Previous post here - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1748847/posts - posted DAYS ago. LOL, not really, posted Tues, with 3 replies, 2 of which were my pings to others. lol Guess the story wasn't ripe yet...
There are two questions here.
1. What was ATC doing?
2. Were both aircraft equipped with TCAS and why didn't it resolve the impending collision?
No, that was only pure speculation (obviously) from defensive Brazilian military officers, who should now be held accountable for their slanderous, inflammatory and irresponsible remarks.
http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/12_47b/leadnews/FDR_Confirms_Legacy_193813-1.html
That is weird that the TCAS didn't go off since it only requires Mode 3/C to work. Unless one of the transponders wasn't working correctly and was sending out a grossly incorrect altitude the TCAS should have gone off.
Wierd, but it's possible one of them had a malfunctioning or inoperative transponder (maybe even accidentally selected off) and didn't know it.
If one or the other aircraft's transponder was inoperative, neither airplane would get a TCAS alert.
If the other aircraft has a transponder but no TCAS, you get alerts on him, but he gets nothing. If the traffic also has altitude reporting, then both resolution advisories are coordinated.
If the traffic does not have altitude reporting on his transponder, then you get only a traffic advisory, regardless of the conflict.
oops wierd = weird
The pilots are back in the US now - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061209/ap_on_re_us/brazil_plane_crash
I'm still trying to understand how that little biz jet took down a 737? Where could it have impacted to cause a large passenger jet to be incapacitated?
A Freeper sent me a Powerpoint file showing the investigation's reconstruction of events. The winglet of the Embraer sliced off about ten feet of the 737's right wing.
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