Re: Pilots Held in Brazil Aircraft Collision - NY Times Reporter in Cockpit
catherine yronwode
>
> It turns out that a NY Times reporter was interviewing the pilots minutes
> before the crash occurred.
It's stranger than that, too...
> October 3, 2006
> Pilots of Jet Tied to Crash Lose Their Passports By PAULO PRADA
>
> RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct. 3 — A Brazilian judge has ordered police to
> confiscate the passports of the two American pilots who were at the
> controls of the business jet that apparently collided with a commercial
> airliner last Friday. The airliner crashed, killing all 155 people aboard,
> but the business jet was able to land safely after the incident.
>
> The judge in Peixoto de Azevedo, the city in the central state of Mato
> Grosso nearest to the forested area where the airliner crashed, took the
> step at the request of the local prosecutor, said Célio Wilson de
> Oliveira, the state secretary for justice and public security, in a
> telephone interview. Under Brazilian law, prosecutors are responsible for
> investigating accidental deaths as well as crimes. While the pilots have
> not been charged with any wrongdoing, Mr. Wilson said, the order was
> issued as a “preventive measure.�€*
>
> Adriano Alves, the prosecutor who filed the request, said in a telephone
> interview that taking the pilots’ passports was “necessary to make sure
> two very important witnesses remain in Brazil until this investigation is
> carried out.�€*
>
> Investigators are still unsure how a midair collision between the two
> aircraft may have happened. They continued today to question the two
> pilots of the business jet, which was newly built by the Brazilian
> manufacturer Embraer and was recently purchased by ExcelAire Service, a
> charter and aircraft-management company based in Ronkonkoma, N.Y.
>
> The two pilots — Joe Lepore, 42, of Bay Shore, N.Y., and Jan Paladino, 34,
> of Westhampton, N.Y. — remained in Rio de Janeiro today, where they are
> also scheduled to be examined by doctors.
>
> A spokesman for Brazil’s Federal Police said he was unable to confirm this
> morning whether the pilots’ passports had already been confiscated.
>
> On Monday, salvage crews found cockpit voice and data recorders in the
> wreckage of the airliner, a Boeing 737-800 operated by Gol Linhas Aéreas
> Inteligentes, a Brazilian airline. The crews used aerial surveys of the
> crash site, which is in a dense, remote stretch of rain forest, to spot
> the tail section of the plane, where the recorders were found.
> Investigators already have the data from the business jet, a Legacy 600,
> which landed safely on a remote military landing strip half an hour after
> its pilots and passengers felt a jolt and noticed some damage to its
> wingtip. The tail of that plane was also affected.
>
> With debris scattered over what could be dozens of miles in heavy forest,
> investigators said it would take time to recover the remains of those
> killed in the crash, and that many bodies might never be found. Only a few
> vof the 155 victims were recovered on Monday.
>
> “The scene is much more difficult than any of us ever could have
> imagined,�€* Brig. Jorge Kersul, an air force commander directing salvage
> operations, told reporters near the crash site on Monday.
>
> In addition to analyzing the data recorders, investigators will broaden
> their search area. After continued complaints from victims’ relatives
> about the slow pace of recovery efforts, government officials flew six
> representatives from the families for an overhead view of the wreckage on
> Monday afternoon.
>
> Four passengers of the smaller, business jet, including Joe Sharkey, a
> reporter and travel columnist for The New York Times, began returning home
> on Sunday.
>
> Aside from describing the damage to the business jet’s wing and tail,
> investigators have provided few details supporting their theory of a
> midair crash between the aircraft, both of them new and equipped with
> systems designed to prevent such a collision.
>
> Mr. Sharkey and ExcelAire expressed doubt that the business jet passengers
> could have survived an impact in the air that would be serious enough to
> bring down an airliner. “No one thought it possible that we had had a
> midair collision with a 737 and we were the ones who walked away,�€* Mr.
> Sharkey wrote in an e-mail account of the episode on Monday.
>
> After landing safely at the military airstrip, he added, the Legacy’s
> passengers “did not know for three hours that a commercial airliner had
> gone down.�€*
HUH? They had a mid-air collision and never saw the other plane?
> Lisa Hendrickson, a spokeswoman for ExcelAire, said the company had no
> evidence that its pilots had made any unexpected changes in their flight
> plan, which set a course at an altitude of 37,000 feet from the
> southeastern city of São José dos Campos, where the plane was
> manufactured, to Manaus, the Amazonian city where the Gol flight had
> originated and where the ExcelAire passengers planned to spend the night.
>
> The pilots “filed their flight plan and did not deviate,�€* she said.
>
> Brazilian officials said that they expected the salvage and cleanup
> efforts at the crash site to take weeks, and that they had invited
> investigators from the United States National Transportation Safety Board
> to help. Liz Verdier, a Seattle-based spokeswoman for Boeing, said on
> Sunday that two of the company’s investigators would join the team
> traveling to Brazil this week.
Okay, so did the airliner explode due to a bomb and a large piece of
falling shrapnel hit the business plane?
cat yronwode