| Brazil reveals September 2006 air crash case |
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| World Affairs Talk | |
| Monday, 04 June 2007 | |
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Court spokesman Fabio Paz said "Now the criminal process begins". The US pilots of the executive jet have been called on to give depositions on 27 August 2007 and the flight controllers have been called to testify a day later, Paz said. Pilots Joseph Lepore, 42, of Bay Shore, NY, and Jan Paladino, 34, of Westhampton Beach, NY, were charged with exposing an aircraft to danger resulting in death. Paz said the charge is similar to involuntary manslaughter and is punishable by one to three years in prison. The men were detained for two months after the crash. They were allowed to return to the Long Island, NY communities late last year after agreeing to return to Brazil when required by local authorities. On 29 September, 2007, the Legacy and a larger passenger jet clipped each other in mid-air over Brazil. The Legacy made an emergency landing, but the passenger jet spun out of control and plunged into the Amazon jungle, killing all 154 people on board. The Boeing 737 was flying from Manaus to the capital. The Brazilian Air Force team that was investigating the accident said there was no blackout or malfunction of the anti-collision warning system on the Legacy business jet assembled by Brazil's Embraer SA and operated by US charter company ExcelAire. Relatives of the victims filed for damages in US courts in November 2006, naming ExcelAire and Honeywell in the suit. The two American pilots had difficulty communicating with Brazilian air traffic controllers while seeking clarification about the altitude they should fly at just hours before their executive jet collided with the passenger jet. A lawyer for the pilots said the charges were unfounded. "The pilots' conduct was completely competent throughout the flight and cannot be fairly characterized as criminal”, Joel Weiss said. “The allegations against the pilots are inaccurate, and the pilots are innocent”. Lepore and Paladino were flying an Embraer Legacy 600 executive jet when it collided Sept. 29, 2006, with a Boeing 737 operated by Gol Linhas Ae`reas Inteligentes SA, causing the passenger jet to crash into a remote swath of the jungle. The death toll surpassed that of Brazil's previous worst air disaster: the 1982 crash of a Boeing 727 operated by the now-defunct Vasp airline in the northeastern city of Fortaleza that killed 137 people. Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva had declared three days of national mourning after the crash. Share & Bookmark             |
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 06 June 2007 ) |
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