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Air traffic controllers as well as two American pilots are likely to share the blame for Brazil's worst aviation disaster when the country's criminal probe of the September collision wraps up in about a month, a spokeswoman for the federal police said yesterday.
The statement by Tamares Carvalho, spokeswoman for lead investigator Renato Sayao, was the first time anyone connected with the criminal investigation has said the controllers would be held responsible for the collision of a Gol airlines Boeing 737 and Embraer Legacy 600 executive jet owned by Ronkonkoma-based ExcelAire and flown by Joseph Lepore, 42, of Bay Shore and Jan Paladino, 34, of Westhampton Beach. Other Brazilian officials have blamed the pilots and, more recently, the controllers as lapses in the air traffic system have come to light since the Sept. 29 incident that killed 154 people when Gol Flight 1907 crashed. None of the seven people aboard the Legacy were injured.
The controllers could face up to 12 years in prison on homicide charges and exposing an aircraft to danger because they failed to divert the Boeing after the Legacy disappeared from their radar, Carvalho said.
Carvalho said she did not know if authorities would prosecute the American pilots, who were formally accused by police with exposing an aircraft to danger before their passports were returned last month and they were allowed to leave the country after 71 days.
Because the controllers are military personnel, the police can only submit their findings to the Defense Department, which would decide whether to prosecute, Carvalho said.
Brazilian officials continue to insist that the American pilots should have noticed that their jet's transponder, which transmits the plane's altitude and is a key component of the anti-collision or TCAS system, was not working before the collision.
In a statement released yesterday, ExcelAire said it "again affirms that its pilots did not intentionally or inadvertently disengage the Legacy's transponder or TCAS and that there was no indication in the cockpit at any time during the flight that the transponder or TCAS system were not operational. The accident investigators continue to analyze the Legacy's transponder and other avionics systems to determine whether those units suffered from defects or faults that compromised their operation."
Besides the criminal investigation, a civil investigation is being conducted by the Brazilian government aided by the U.S. National Transportation Board and Federal Aviation Administration. That probe on what caused the collision will be completed in the fall.
