The CPI Report on the Sept. 29 Crash

Here is a link to a pdf file of the 170-page report by the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI) on the Sept. 29 crash and the crisis in Brazilian air traffic.

Richard Pedicini in Sao Paulo tirelessly translated this from the Portuguese, and has added Translator's Notes at appropriate spots to point out slips, errors and outright mistranslations in the Portuguese version of English radio transcripts from the American pilots.

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The Truth Finally Gets Its Socks On

Given that the two American pilots of the Legacy 600 are now on trial, in absentia, on criminal charges that carry prison time in Brazil, it’s interesting to see how conventional wisdom has finally evolved in Brazil to accommodate realities that were violently in dispute for many months after the Sept. 29 crash.

Take this article by Concetta Kim Martens of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a think-tank whose interests include “the formulation of rational and constructive U.S. policies towards Latin America.” The article was published on the organization’s Web site, www.COHA.org, and republished by Brazil Magazine (www.brazzil.com), where it drew lively reader comment.

Obviously, I have no quarrel with the essence of the article.

That’s because nearly every assertion in it was first made a long time ago on this blog. But that was way back when no one else in the media was even raising the issues of the soundness of Brazil’s air-traffic control system, or criticizing the reckless rush by the Brazilian government, military and Federal Police to criminalize the Sept. 29 accident and scapegoat the American pilots.

Now that accuracy is winning the battle, we need to encourage perspective to march forward. So I need to point out that the COHA article, while essentially correct in its points, shades history a bit. And as I sense we are nearing the point where journalism must tip its fedora to history, I am sure Ms. Martens will forgive my nit-picking.

For one thing, she muddies the facts a bit on the demeanor of air-traffic controllers after the accident. “Since the September 29 Gol crash over the Amazon, controllers felt unfairly targeted for splenetic criticism [my italics] they were receiving from the public, and reacted by staging several work stoppages …” she writes.

Didn't happen quite that way.

Here is what did happen:

First the American pilots were recklessly and, it seemed to me universally, scapegoated. It took a while for the public in Brazil to become aware of, or concede, the role of air-traffic control in the accident.

Remember how long the ex-defense minister, Wonderful Waldir Pires, loudly insisted that the pilots caused the crash by performing reckless aerial loop d loops over the Amazon? Nobody in power told him to put a lid on that nonsense, including his boss, the President, who won a runoff election amid the passions of the disaster, which had occurred two days before the polls opened.

Only in time did the general public, but not the authorities, acknowledge that the Sept. 29 crash had been set in motion by a series of egregious errors by air traffic controllers, who themselves were working in deplorable conditions with faulty equipment within a system beset with major technological deficiencies in radar and radio communications, especially over the Amazon.

Initially, as I argued last October, November and afterward, the air-traffic controllers' protests were basically a warning shot across the bow of government and military to not implicate air -traffic control in the blame.

What actually happened was that low-ranking controllers – fearing that they, too, might become scapegoats along with the pilots (which in fact ultimately happened) – clammed up while the American pilots remained in custody in Brazil.

While the pilots twisted in the wind, the core group of controllers who were on duty during the accident -- the people who knew, for example, that air-traffic control was aware of the transponder malfunction on the Legacy for 50 minutes before the crash and failed to raise the alarm -- remained silent, went to ground and refused to answer any questions, citing psychological trauma.

As the protests continued for months, air traffic in Brazil was thrown into chaos.

For months after the Sept. 29 accident, public sentiment, whipped up by xenophobic Brazilian media, had focused sharply and exclusively on the Americans as culprits. There was no “splenetic criticism” in Brazil of the air traffic controllers that I am aware of. Of course, I was raising criticism of air traffic control on this little blog. It wasn't splenetic -- though the outraged and verbally violent reaction to it certainly was.

Ms. Martens does zero-in effectively on some of the official nitwits who continually brayed that all was well in Brazil’s skies; that the Sept. 29 disaster was caused strictly by reckless, arrogant Americans; that Brazil’s skies and airports were under world-class supervision and that to say otherwise was a base calumny and an insult to the honor of the nation.

Of course, the official indignation all rang a bit hollow again in July, when another airplane crash killed 199 people at overcrowded, unsafe Congonhas Airport in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s busiest.

Wonderful Waldir Pires, the obstinate Defense Minister responsible for air-traffic control, was finally out the door. So was Jose Carlos “Sunshine” Pereira, who ran the airports authority and suggested that it was slander to suggest that anything, anything might be wrong with Brazil’s aviation system.

Sunshine Pereira ranks right up there near Wonderful Waldir as a classic character in this story. Pereira steadfastly insisted after the Sept. 29 crash, even as the evidence became manifestly clear that both aircraft had been put on a collision course at 37,000 feet by air traffic control, that “it is not the best moment to carry out changes” including addressing the inept military control of civilian aviation.

Later, as international aviation groups expressed outrage at the way Brazil had clumsily politicized and criminalized the Sept. 29 accident, and even after the second horrible accident in July, with 350 now dead in two disasters in 10 months, Sunshine Pereira stood by his rusty guns.

“Brazil does not need international help,” he proclaimed, inanely. “The crisis is ours. The dead are ours.”

Shortly after, he was ducked-walked off the deck.

But as Ms. Martens writes, the President remained in a defensive crouch. “The security of our aviation system is compatible with all other international standards,” Lucky Lula proclaimed. As recently as three weeks ago, Lucky Lula was still scoffing at the fact, otherwise widely accepted all over the world, that there are black holes and blind spots in air-traffic control radar and radio communications over the Amazon.

I assume Ms. Martens’ small deficiencies in context and nuance are a consequence of the demands of concise summary. She writes: “President da Silva’s government has come under a great deal of fire for failing to properly address the nation’s air-travel safety, an act that according to several aviation experts, and the adamant belief of a good deal of the public sentiment, led to the air disaster” [s]

Well, I'm here to repeat, for the record, that this "public sentiment" took a long time getting its socks on, and even longer to reach the level of being "adamant."

And I should also point out that, while public sentiment may well have finally come around to the truth, as Ms. Martens asserts, two American pilots remain on trial on spurious criminal charges that public sentiment realizes were trumped-up.

--end

Brazil's Skies: 'Unreliable, Unsafe and Inefficient'

Here are some findings in a critical new report-card on Brazil's air-traffic management sent to Brazilian airlines and aviation officials last month by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), whose 224 member airlines represent 94 percent of the world's passenger and cargo traffic:

--The air-traffic control system in Brazil is "unreliable, unsafe and inefficient," with negative effects not only on basic transportation, but on "opportunities for economic growth."

--Nor are things improving, given the government's failure to address political mismanagement of civilian aviation in Brazil. "The political crisis is expected to continue for some time, possibly causing further ATC [air-traffic control] problems in the near future."

--Since the Sept. 29 mid-air collision over the Amazon that killed 154 people, labor problems and other disruptions in air-traffic control have "magnified the deficiencies of the ATC system" while costing airlines "more than $70 million" because of delays and airport problems.

--"There is concern in the industry that appropriate training for air traffic, airline and airport technical support is not being provided. For example, it is apparent that Brazil will be unable to comply with ICAO-mandated [International Civil Aviation Organization] ATC English-proficiency level by next year."

--In 2006, the accident rate for Brazilian operators was 3.5 times higher than world average and 1.25 times higher than the regional rate" for Latin American countries. [My note: Brazil's accident rate -- a measure of aircraft-hull losses -- was significantly higher than the world average in each of the last five years, so the loss of the Gol 737 on Sept. 29, 2006 was not the deciding factor.]

The IATA report was not publicly released. I obtained a copy, as did some Brazilian newspapers that ran edited excerpts.

In the Aug. 15 report, the world airline trade group outlined "short-term objectives" and offered assistance to Brazilian authorities in fixing the country's air-traffic control system.

Some of the "objectives:"

--"Establish a communication link between the Ministry [the Defense Ministry, which runs aviation] and the IATA and airlines to enable collaborative decision-making process by which industry experts will meet on a monthly basis during the next 12 months."

--"Implement a contingency plan to mitigate ATC problems."

--"Resolve political-labor problems" in air traffic control.

--"Ensure that ICAO principles are applied to accident investigations without external [My note: meaning "political"] interference..."

--"Ensure that adequate air-traffic services are rendered by all area control centers, including radar surveillance, ground-to-air communications and navigational aids."

--"Achieve compliance with ICAO-mandated ATC English proficiency levels."

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The Brazilian media gave the report cursory attention and focused on only a few elements. Here are some excerpts from today's Folha (translation by Richard Pedicini):

Folha de São Paulo

"Brazil has 3.5 times more accidents than the world average ... Numbers are from 2006 and are in International Air Transport Association report; government did not comment. ... According to the document, the air traffic control situation is 'unstable, inefficient and harms flight safety'

Brazil had, last year, 3.5 times more accidents than the world average and air traffic control harms flight safety, affirmed a report by IATA (English acronym for International Air Transport Association) to which the Folha had access.

The document was sent to the Ministry of Defense, to the airlines and to SNEA (National Airlines Syndicate) on the situation of air transport in the country. ...

IATA foresees that the crisis is ongoing and that the country may suffer impacts in tourism and, ultimately, in connectivity with the rest of the world. ...

Other measures indicated are the solution of the political and labor problems surrounding the air traffic controllers and the improvement of the professionals' level of proficiency in English. ...

According to the report, very favorable to the airlines, the lack of a contingency plan affects reliability and efficiency of the airlines' operations.

Sought out, the Ministry of Defense made no comment.

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[MY COMMENT:]

The IATA merely reiterates -- albeit with the clout of the world's airlines behind it -- what anyone who has been seriously following this story since the Sept. 29 disaster last year knows well. Brazilian air-traffic control is in chronic disarray and disrepair.

Hobbled by poor training, miserable morale and unreliable equipment, Brazilian air traffic controllers inadvertently put those two aircraft on a collision course, and failed to take action to prevent the disaster even though it was apparent for 50 minutes before the crash that a disaster was being set in motion out over the Amazon.

We've come a long way in 11 months, it seems. At least now, the sorry state of Brazilian air-traffic control is at least acknowledged. By some.

A few days after getting out of Brazil following the Sept. 29 crash, and while involved in a media circus that enveloped me because I was the only survivor free to write and talk about what had happened, I mentioned in an interview, with CNN I think it was, that Brazil's air space over the Amazon was notoriously perilous, with air-traffic-control radar blind zones and radio-communications blackout areas. Not to mention air-traffic controllers who are poorly trained and demoralized, and in many cases unable to communicate adequately in English, the lingua franca of world aviation.

How did I know this? Well, at the jungle air strip where the seven of us who survived were held after we made an emergency landing in the damaged Legacy 600, two Brazilian military investigators who showed up as the inquiry into the crash began told me so. So did a half-dozen international pilots who fly Brazil's skies and who e mailed or phoned me after the crash.

And calls to others elicited the same information: You fly the Amazon air routes -- where traffic has been increasing sharply in recent years -- hoping that nothing gets in your way, especially in the vast stretches of rain forest between Brasilia and Manaus, where the collision occurred, because you're often simply out of contact with the ground (and the ground with you).

The reaction in Brazil to my saying this in an interview in early October frankly astonished me. You'd have thought I had accused the Brazilian Air Force, which runs all air-traffic control, of kidnapping the Lindbergh baby and selling it to drug dealers.

The mob came at me with virtual torches and pitchforks. The former Defense Minister, Wonderful Waldir Pires (since fired), denounced me personally on several occasions for my effrontery in stating what was obvious about Brazilian air-traffic control. The President, Luiz Inacio (Lucky) Lula da Silva, was reportedly furious at what he regarded as an insult to Brazil's honor.

In fact, in press interviews, Lucky Lula again invoked my alleged calumny two weeks ago, as if it were not now freely acknowledged -- even in Brazilian investigations into the crash -- that there are notorious dead zones for radar and radio communications over the Amazon, and that the Brazilian air traffic control has some ... well, issues, as the tech people say.

Meanwhile, the criminal trial continues in Sinop, a small city in the Amazon. Two American pilots and four Brazilian air traffic controllers, the designated scapegoats for this disgraceful system, remain in grave peril.

--end

Video of Jungle Search

As the criminal trial goes on, it's easy to get diverted by procedure and the endless recriminations in Brazil and forget what happened to 154 victims. On Sunday night, Fantastico, the top-rated Brazilian TV news magazine, ran haunting and previously unseen video of the rescue operations in the Amazon. Here is the link.

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Trial Update

Above: The Sinop airport and the trial proceedings.

Update on the trial from So Noticias, a news site that covers the interior of Mato Grosso state. The trial is being held in the small city of Sinop, near the Amazon crash site. (Translation thanks to Richard Pedicini).

Note this amazing wording in the story, which reflects a common attitude that convictions are a sure thing: "There is no time set for the verdict and sentencing of the accused."

From So Noticias:

"New steps in the trial in the second worst air accident in the history of Brazilian aviation, in the far north of Mato Grosso, will be set starting on the 12th. This was the deadline stipulated by the federal judge in Sinop, Murilo Mendes, for the lawyers for American pilots Joseph Lepore and Jan Paladino, and for the four air traffic controllers, all indicted by the Federal Prosecutors' Office (MPF), to present their thesis of defense and their list of witnesses.

Só Notícias learned that this stage will be marked by the testimony of the witnesses for the accusation and, later, the defense. Prosecutor Thiago Lemos de Andrade has already declared that only two were presented by the MPF, one being an air traffic control supervisor and a passenger in the Legacy jet. [MY NOTE: I don't know who they are referring to by "a passenger in the Legacy jet." Along with the two pilots, there were five passengers: Two employees of the Long Island air-charter company, ExcelAire, which had just purchased the plane in Brazil; two employees of Embraer, the Brazilian manufacturer; and me, a reporter on a freelance assignment who hitched a ride on the 13-seat Legacy].

After that a period will also be opened for possible requests for investigations and examinations.

There is no time set for the verdict and sentencing of the accused.

This week, the controllers who were working in Cindacta 1, in Brasilia, on the day of the accident – Jomarcelo Fernandes dos Santos, Lucivando Tibúrcio de Alencar, Leandro José Santos de Barros and Felipe Santos dos Reis - testified in Sinop. Judge Murilo Mendes questioned the four on the acts that appear in the indictment presented by the Federal Prosecutors' Office and which may have contributed to the accident, in which the 154 passengers and crew died.

Americans Joseph Lepore and Jan Paladino, who were piloting the Legacy jet, which was involved in the collision with the Gol Boeing, did not appear. The lawyers asked that they be heard in the USA, but the request was denied by Murilo Mendes who determined that the trial would continue without their presence.

Before the 12th, the Federal Court should send the transcript of the hearings to the parts involved, so that they can manifest themselves and object to items with which they disagree. "

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Trumped-Up Charges

In Brazil, trumped-up charges...outraged international peer groups...xenophobia gone wild ...

No, this has nothing to do with American pilots. Without further comment ...

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Once More Down the Rabbit Hole

I hate to trot out the old Alice in Wonderland woodcut again, but the Brazilian criminal court in which the two American pilots are now being tried has taken us, once again, down the rabbit hole.

As reported here previously, the charge that the pilots face (as trumped-up as it is), is not an extradictable one under the applicable U.S.-Brazil treaty, because it does not allege intent.

Nevertheless, Judge Murilo Mendes of the federal court in Sinop, a regional center on the edge of the Amazon jungle over which the Sept. 29 mid-air collision occurred, is insisting that the two pilots come to Brazil to testify, rather than testifying in depositions in the United States, as allowed by the treaty.

The jurist's reasoning: A request to avoid coming to Brazil (where the two Americans were held without charge for over two months after the crash in an atmosphere of loud anti-Americanism and politicization of the accident) is an attempt "to revert the natural order of things. The defendant should come to the judge, and not the judge to the defendant."

Well, so much for international treaties, which must of course bow to some Brazilian regional judge's ad-hoc argument invoking "the natural order of things."

Meanwhile, here's another flash from down the rabbit hole:

Claudio Pimentel, a Brazilian lawyer representing the families of some of the 154 who were killed in a multi-million-dollar civil suit against the Americans is involved in the criminal trial as an assistant to the prosecution.

And he's even allowed to make pronouncements that the defendants are, of course, guilty. (Why would they be on trial if they were not? And how else could money be made?)

What's more, the civil suit lawyer/assistant to the prosecution is loudly calling for the "preventive arrest" of the American pilots (an arrest that could only be legally accomplished, of course, if the pilots were to come to Brazil as defendants seeking a fair trial. As I said, welcome down the rabbit hole).

The newspaper Diario de Cuiaba (translation by Richard Pedicini in Sao Paulo), has the civil-suit lawyer/assistant to the prosecution accusing the pilots of "disrespect for the families and the Brazilian courts."

From relatives: "the absence of the pilots at the [trial's first day] was a demonstration of carelessness with the fact." And, "They are afraid to face the court, which will bring to light their blame."

Lawyers for the American pilots are appealing the judge's decision that they must come to Brazil to defend themselves. The Brazilian judge has been assured that, in the United States, he would be free to conduct questioning as he sees fit.

[A personal note: Now that emotions are heating up again with the trial under way, I'm back in the gun-sights of various lackeys in the Brazilian media -- where journalism traditionally reflects, and genuflects to, entrenched power and money, and where there is a lack of tradition of independence.

As the only eyewitness who has been free to write openly about this tragedy (the other six survivors being constrained by various legalities), I've done so, with conviction, since day one. But I've done it as an independent journalist, reporting from here, on my own personal blog -- which is widely read, and parsed, by interested parties in Brazil.

Certain Brazilian reporters and politicians, reflecting the weird xenophobia of Brazil's chattering classes, find it politically expedient to misidentify my affiliations. They do this willfully and dishonestly.

[Appended Aug. 30: It has been pointed out to me that the Brazilian media in question also act without regard to the perils of libel (the laws of which are clear in Brazil) -- specifically on the matters of willful negligence, reckless disregard for the truth, a refusal to correct egregious errors, and a disregard of damage to reputation caused by deliberately repeating falsehoods.]

Anyway, let's be clear (to the extent that clarity is permitted to exist in a poisoned atmosphere):

This is a totally independent blog produced by a freelance writer who answers to no one but himself. I write it because I was there, because I know what happened, and because it is my duty to bear witness.

It says a lot about how thin-skinned and insecure certain elements among the powerful are in Brazil, that they get so emotionally upset about a mere independent blogger's reporting on what they're up to.]

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