Joe Sharkey At Large

Nope. Sorry, fresh out. Come back tomorrow.

Actually, a friend of mine threatened me with an “extraordinary rendition to get you out of that damn jungle.” A correspondent who signed himself or herself “Gaucho Marx” said: “Haven’t you figured out yet that we’re all crazy? Don’t you know crazy is contagious?”

So we’ll give it a rest for today at least. And turn to various other travel topics:

–NOT IN THE POLONIUM SECTION, PLEASE! — Showing that comedy is all about — uh, what was that? oh yes: timing — British Airways recently sent its Executive Club members an e-mail that used these always-alarming words: “We’ll be making important changes.” The changes? “We will no longer pre-assign seats for most customers at the time of booking.” As of Dec. 5, only the following can choose their seats in advance: “families with young children, FIRST class travelers (the caps are BA’s), Gold and Silver Executive Club members, and those travelers holding fully flexible
tickets” [read: those who paid the unrestricted, top-dollar published fare that virtually no one has paid in coach in 5 years].

Now, at least two British Air 767s are grounded and being scrubbed because killer Russian spies brought super-deadly Polonium 210 on board. Oops! More than 30,000 passengers are being notified they may have been seated near the Polonium section.

Quick! If you’re a B.A. flier, hurry onto Flyertalk.com and get Viajero Joven to custom-book you a mileage run so you can hit Silver or Gold for next year! (Seriously, the guy is a certified genius. Last year, when I needed 22,000 miles to maintain Platinum on Continental for this year, he custom-booked me a 23,000 two-day, one-night trip that strangely included two connections in Guam — for a total fare of $701. I bailed out at the last minute only under threat from my wife, but I’m planning on another go at it before the year ends,. because this year I’m even short for Gold.}

Anyway, remember last August when the cops in the U.K. went all wobbly over a grandly proclaimed but rather thin-in-the-detail terrorist plot to use liquids, gels and mince pies or whatever to do something really, really bad? At first, they said it was blow up 10 airliners over selected U.S. cities, but there turned out not to be any actual evidence of that beyond the whispered word of a batty informant who’d been on the payroll for two years and was looking to re-up.

Almost four months later, no real evidence of a serious in-the-works plot has actually emerged (shhhh, they’re still investigating). But the U.S. Homeland Security Department started shrieking in tune with the Brits, and the result is my wife got busted at security over Thanksgiving for a container of yogurt.

Liquids, pastes and gels still remain banned except in three ounce containers obediently displayed in a one-quart-size zipper-lock plastic bag (a pint or a gallon will not do). And gel-bras of all sizes are still o.k., the falsies industry has been assured.

Anyway, you can’t get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich onto a plane these days. (The peanut butter is o.k., someone I know was told at security, but the jelly half has to be tossed). But somehow, a scary gang of former USSR spies turned homicidal-maniac-gangsters-with-actual-KGB-experience managed to get Polonium 210, one of the most lethal substances on the planet, onto the planes.

Remember, Boris: No Marmite. And remember to book a seat away from the Polonium section.

–I WASN’T TOLD WE HAD TO DRESS! I felt somewhat sorry for Pope Benedict XVI the other day when he showed up in Turkey in his regular simple white uniform-of-the-day only to be met by a Turkish Muslim religious leader wearing a gold-embroidered waistcoat and a sailor hat that looked like it was 10 inches tall.

I mean, the Pope obviously knows how to dress simply for travel. In the picture, you could almost hear him thinking: “Hey, I got a 20-pound diamond-and-ruby studded gold crown and a crimson fur-lined cape back home. Nobody told me this was formal.”

Today’s paper offers some reassurance that the dress code has finally been agreed upon. Nice to see some agreement after, what? 1,000 years of trouble? Someone obviously was dispatched back to Rome for the formal duds because today the Pope is shown in a ermine-lined red cape and gold-embroidered stole meeting the Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew, himself resplendent in his own embroidered cape and hat-that-resembles-a-mountain-camping-tent, not to mention a bejewled brooch the size of a manhole cover and, as an added touch, a long gold-filligreed pole that would be the envy of the gayest gondolier in Venice.

You and I think packing for a trip is a chore! Imagine these guys on the road.

–BUSH DOES VIETNAM! Finally, George Bush has gone to Vietnam, well over 35 years since a lot of the rest of us were dragged there while the President’s daddy’s pals snagged him a cushy gig defending the Domino Theory in Texas and, he insists, also in Alabama, honest. And Bush reported for duty both days in Vietnam! Goob job, soldier! Mission accomplished!

Can a trip to Vietnam by Dick Five-Deferral (”I had other priorities”) Cheney be far behind? Can’t you see the Vice President and his pals in camouflage kit and conical peasant hats, squatting in a rice paddy with shotguns, to bag a duck. “DUCK!” I mean the verb, not the noun!

–AND FINALLY, a movie review that doesn’t pull punches. “An Ambitious and Deeply Stupid Movie,” says the headline on today’s Slate over a review of “The Fountain,” which stars Brad Pitt as a time-traveler. “A really stupid movie,” says the reviewer, Dana Stevens. So you can scratch that sucker off your Netflix “Saved” queue.
–ends

The Federal Police in Brazil don’t appear to be moving as readily as they said they would yesterday to address the holding of two American pilots — Rep. Peter King of New York calls them “hostages” — after the Sept. 29 mid-air collision.

It seems the cops in Mato Grosso (see my descriptions of my strange Night at the Mato Grosso Police Station in the London Times link in the post below) now say they probably won’t get around to interviewing the two pilots (again!) before the week of Dec. 13. Yesterday, they were reported in Brazil as saying that they would interview the pilots next week, with a release expected shortly afterward.

Representatives of the families of those who died in the accident have strongly objected after the Federal Police said they were ready to release the pilots and focus their attention instead on Brazil’s air traffic control system and its protesting air traffic controllers (2,200 air controllers now, down from 3,600 15 years ago, though air traffic has doubled in Brazil since then). Overwhelmingly, evidence accumulated so far points to a series of errors and malfunctions in air traffic control as the primary cause of the crash.

But the complaints in the several major lawsuits filed so far all name as defendants companies in the United States — ExcelAire, the charter jet company that employs the pilots, and Honeywell, the company that manufactured the transponder.

The loss of 154 lives on Gol Flight 1907 was profoundly tragic, and it is crucial that the faults that caused this disaster be exposed and fixed in Brazil. To cover this up and falsely assign blame is to dishonor those who died.

All together now: who has money? The Americans! I mean, good luck getting a judgment out of the Brazilian Air Force and its air traffic control system, which pays its air controllers so poorly that many of them drive taxis or have other second jobs.

The Association of Family and Friends of the Victims of Flight 1907 has today publicly demanded a delay in any planned release of the American pilots while the investigations continue.

The Association issued a statement today saying that unspecified “financial interests” were behind the move to release the pilots, who have been detained now, without charges or any evidence of charges, for 61 days.

—

Here’s a link to my November 26 article in the Times of London Sunday Magazine on the mid-air collision in Brazil. Click here.

Yesterday’s post speculated that the Brazilian Air Force boys hustled up to inspect the Legacy transponder at Honeywell Aerospace in Phoenix this week as a kind of “Hail Mary” pass to find something incriminating while the Federal Police get ready to release the pilots and shift blame to the Air Force’s air-traffic-control domain.

It’s been pointed out to me that the far more likely explanation is that the Air Force was ordered to do one more symbolic bit of “due diligence” and report that they, too, had found no evidence — before the jig is up. That makes a lot of sense, and I stand clarified.

[Note appended Nov. 30 -- I totally missed a story in O Globo last week in which the Air Force commander, Brigadier Luiz Carlos da Silva Bueno, was quoted as telling the Brazilian Senate that air traffic controllers may have made errors monitoring the Legacy from Brazilia, with one controller tellling his replacement at a shift change that the Legacy was at 36,000 feet, whenin fact it was at 37,000 -- and that, the brigadier said, the Legacy transponder was not working.]

Major Brazilian news media are reporting tonight that the Federal Police in Brazil have said the two American pilots detained for 60 days after a mid-air collision that killed 154 people over the Amazon Sept. 29 will be released as early as next week after one more round of questioning.

The news comes after an earlier report that Brazilian Air Force officials had hurried to Phoenix this week to examine the transponder of the Legacy 600 business jet that survived the crash — evidently in a desperate last-minute lunge to try to find incriminating evidence that the pilots had deliberately turned off the device to avoid detection by air traffic control. No one but the top brass in Air Force and their boss the Defense Minister, I should add here, gives any credence to that assertion.

The Federal Police and the Air Force are conducting independent parallel investigations into the crash, but it’s believed the Federal Police will have the final say on if and when the pilots’ passports will be returned so they can leave Brazil. The Air Force is responsible for running Brazil’s air-traffic control system, which has been hobbled in recent weeks by air-traffic controllers protesting unsafe conditions and poor pay.

Here’s my reading of the current situation:

Recently, as international attention has focused on the continuing detention of the American pilots without charges, the Air Force and the Brazilian defense minister, Waldir Pires, have been thrown on the defensive.

For almost two months, I have been referring to Mr. Pires as Wonderful Waldir, chiefly to ridicule him for his batty insistence that the crash could only have been caused by the American pilots deliberately turning off the plane’s transponder so they could do illegal stunt maneuvers and aerial tricks to show off the brand new $25 million jet over the Amazon skies.

Slowly, outrage about the pilots’ indefinite detention has built in the United States. But the outrage has also built in Brazil, where it has become more than apparent that the chief cause of the crash lay within the air-traffic control system, and that Wonderful Waldir’s intransigence on the matter was becoming an international embarassment to a country working hard to project a modern, first-world image.

The “aerial maneuvers” charge was always a way to deflect blame from the air traffic control system. Long after anybody with a brain the size of a turnip had dismissed the “loop-d-loop” allegations as nonsense, the Brazilian Air Force was under pressure to keep them alive. Thus the trip to Phoenix, where Honeywell Aeronautics, the manufacturer of the transponder, had brought the transponder and other technical equipment from the Legacy cockpit to be examined.

The Air Force trip to Phoenix was led by Colonel Rufino Ferreira, the president of the Brazilan Air Force panel conducting the secret investigation in an air-control system run by, uh, the Brazilian Air Force.

Myself, I’m glad to hear they got to Arizona without incident, as Brazilian air traffic controllers have been tying up that nation’s air traffic since last month to protest what they call unsafe working conditions. The Air Force brass must have prudently taken no chances and flown private.

However, the Federal Police said they’ll question the American pilots again next week and “after that they will be free to return to the United States,” even if it is determined they might likely be indicted later, according to the national newspaper O Globo.

Also, O Globo says tonight, the Federal Police are “convinced” that there were “decisive” air-traffic control “failures in the Sao Jose dos Campos tower, from where the Legacy took off, and in Brasilia, which should have had the jet descend to 36,000 feet and did not.”

And the Federal Police now also publicly state there were no loop-d-loops: “Technical examinations have demonstrated that the Legacy’s flight was linear, without abrupt maneuvers or risky tests,” Globo quotes the Federal Police Chief Renato Sayao as saying.

Brazzil.com adds: “Sayao now is turning his attention to the Brazilian controllers.”

If the controlers accelerate their protests in response, it will not be a good time to be flying in Brazil.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, which has been conducting one of the independent investigations and has arrived at its major conclusions, categorically stated recently that all of the evidence shows there were no aerial maneuvers or stunt flying by the Legacy, which was level at 37,000 feet at time of impact.

But Wonderful Waldir — to whom the Air Force and air traffic control report — has steadfastly maintained that only mendacity on the part of the American pilots could have caused the accident. Brazilian air traffic control could in no way have been a cause, he has insisted.

But now the question is, who you gonna believe: the N.T.S.B. and the Brazilian Federal Police, or Wonderful Waldir & Co. trying to cover their butts while holding onto that honeypot of an air-control budget? What did these guys expect to find in Phoenix, after all of the independent experts have already made full reports? Maybe some yellow-cake uranium or a cache of aluminum tubes will turn up.

Now, at the risk of repeating myself (again), let me review the evidence that is currently not in dispute by anyone who isn’t clinically delusional.

–One, the Legacy was flying at 37,000, on what would turn out to be be a collision course with the 737, under direct orders from flight control.

–Two, the Legacy tried unsuccessfully 19 times before the crash to raise air-traffic control near Brasilia.

–Three, in a colossal screw-up, overworked and undersupervised air traffic controllers at the Brasilia air traffic control center determined — using equipment generally believed to be faulty — that the Legacy was at 36,000 feet when it was actually at 37,000. The crash occurred in their sector.

–Four, Brazilian air traffic control radar and communications in the region where the crash occurred are notoriously unreliable.

–Five, I was ON the damn Legacy! If they’d have been doing loop-d-loops when we collided with a 737, I would have had one hell of a front-page story, wouldn’t I?

On Sunday night, the Globo network’s highly rated weekly show “Fantastico” presented irrefutable evidence of blind spots and dead zones in air traffic control in that region, just as pilots and other experts have been saying for two months.

“Fantastico” also dragged out still another frightened air traffic controller who said the Amazon has “thousands of square miles” that radar can’t cover with accuracy. As colleagues have in the past, he said that flight controllers, nearly all of whom are in the military, are badly supervised, work long hours at lousy pay, and have to deal with old equipment for which there often is no money for repairs.

Wonderful Waldir, of course, had a retort. “Defense Minister Waldir Pires says that these blind spots or black holes are just inventions by those trying to discredit Brazil or his work,” Brazzil.com reported earlier today.

His work.

By the way, New York Rep. Peter King, the Congressman who represents parts of Long Island, where the pilots are from and where the Legacy’s owner, ExcelAire Service, is based, is now openly referring to the pilots as “hostages.” He says he is working for their release and hoping to get the State Department to work with him a little more tenaciously.

The pilots Joe Lepore, 42, and Jan Paladino, 34, have now been held hostage for 60 days. Let’s hope the Federal Police are good to their word.

–ends

–end

Brazil’s Defense Minister Wonderful Waldir Pires again denied last week that there are any dead zones or black holes in air traffic radar coverage. “If the holes existed, I’m sure I would have been informed,” he said.

Given the recent drumbeat of media stories showing that Brazil’s air space is riddled with air traffic control communications problems, perhaps someone by now has awakened the man responsible for the country’s militarized air-traffic control and duly informed him.

Last night there was more proof offered on “Fantastico,” a popular weekly program on Globo TV, in which a radar display from the air traffic control center at Brasilia shows what Brazzil.com today describes as “a huge black hole, a blind spot not covered by radar, which extends for thousands of square miles.”

In an interview on the program, an anonymous controller “also pointed out that the air control equipment being used by Brazil is in very bad shape and often obsolete. Some of the devices are over 30 years old,” Brazzil.com says, adding:

“He told that is not uncommon that workers in the control center get ghost planes in their monitors. In these cases, the controller sees two planes in his equipment even though in reality there is only one aircraft. …”

“Another problem are static images on the screen that show an airplane in movement as if it had stopped like a helicopter. This happens when the system fails or the computer freezes.”

The controller added, according to Brazzil.com, that equipment is prone to failures. “We have a hard time to talk; the radio frequencies are bad. And we have an aggravating circumstance today: the number of flights has significantly increased.” …

Among the problems controllers have is noise and interference on their radios in the urban Brasilia area itself. “You can pick up cellular phone, pirate radio and sometimes even official radio,” the controller said.

Often, over the vast skies of the Amazon, “the controller can talk to the pilot but cannot see what’s happening. The collision between the Boeing and the Legacy, which left 154 dead and many unanswered questions, happened inside this black hole. “Knowing what I know I don’t feel secure flying in this area,” the controller said.

Earth to Wolderful Waldir: Do you read us? Over.

Meanwhile, the two American pilots of the Legacy 600 corporate jet, Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino, remain detained in Brazil, with no charges or even the slightest evidence of possible charges having been presented by the Brazilian authorities. It is now Day 59.

–end

I think I have said this here before, but it bears repeating: The only thing I know about airplanes is how to sit in one. And the only authority I bring to the discussion over what happened on Sept. 29 at 37,000 feet over the Amazon is based on two things:

1. I was a witness, and am so far the only one of the seven survivors who’s been free to talk and write publicly about this event, which came to dominate this little travel blog that I started writing, just for fun, in August.

2. From day one, I sensed that the fix was in to scapegoat the two American pilots. And then the Defense Minister of Brazil and other authorities began seriously making wild charges, such as the now utterly discredited allegation (which went unchallenged in the media for about a month) that the American pilots caused the horrendous crash because they were doing “stunt maneuvers” in the sky to show off the new Legacy 600 jet. So I decided to get tough here about what I saw going on there, even though I knew it would guarantee the continuation of my very much unwanted role as a punching bag for a small contingent of anti-American hysterics in Brazil.

Now I sense we might be reaching the end game, though the pilots are still being held and, it’s clear, the authorities are seriously worried that releasing the pilots will further rile up the very angry Brazilian air traffic controllers, who have been creating massive air-traffic delays in a month-long protest over poor and unsafe working conditions that began in the aftermath of the Sept. 29 disaster.

But developments in Brazil are moving fast. No longer does it create a virtual international incident to suggest that, as many pilots have told me, the Brazilian air-traffic control system is broken and badly in need of repair. The official in charge of all air traffic control centers and his No. 2 man were both fired last week by Brazil’s president, and there’s speculation in the media that the Defense Minister, President Lula’s good friend “Wonderful” Waldir Pires, himself will be out soon.

Anyone who knows anything about aviation accidents figures that disasters like this are usually caused by a series of events, some human and some technological, some small and some not so small. But it’s now also clear that the core problem on Sept. 29 was a series of air-traffic-control mistakes that put both planes on a direct collision course.

If you’re plowing through these very long posts regularly, that says you’re awfully interested in what happened. If you want to read what a lot of the real experts — pilots and other aviation professionals — are saying, let me suggest a smart forum called Professional Pilots Rumour Network. PPRuNe.org/forums. (Click “Rumours and News”). Normally, I’d be hesitant to publicize this site because I’d be afraid of siccing the crazies on them. But the crazies (ever alert are they) are already in there posting their batty anti-American comments along with the serious aviation professionals. Luckily the forum is well-supervised and most of its particpants were raised well by their parents. It makes for very interesting reading, especially if you’re looking for discourse on the technical aspects of the accident. I read it just to learn more from the experts, whether factually or in informed speculation. I wouldn’t think of posting anything on it myself.

O.K. Now here are a few news updates from and about this situation in Brazil. (Also, if you’re planning to travel to Brazil, air-traffic perils aren’t the only thing you need to be concerned about. See two items just off the police blotter at the end of this post.)

–IFATCA, the International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers’ Associations, has issued a strong statement deriding authorities’ assertions that Brazilian air-traffic-control is a world-class operation.

“IFATCA believes that operators in the air (the pilots) and on the ground (the controllers) fell victim to unacceptable systems traps brought on by ‘non-error-tolerant’ and ‘bad system design’ of air traffic control and flight equipment in use. We are confident that our statements concerning this equipment are accurate, and said equipment is responsible for starting the fatal chain of events of Sept. 29, 2006…” the statement says in part.

Decrying the ongoing “counterproductive blame game,” the group called for the pilots’ release. “IFATCA urges the Brazilian authorities to release immediately the two U.S. pilots held in Brazil,” it said, adding “Incarceration without justification will do little to foster an environment of mutual trust and respect that is needed to carry out a successful investigation.”

The full statement can be found at www.ifatca.org

[And yes, I will soon learn how to make a live link on this blog. Sorry.]

– Brazilians are bracing for further air-travel delays as the controllers continue their protests and as the holiday and summer travel seasons approach. (The start of summer coincides with the year-end holidays in the southern hemisphere). “The turbulence is going to get worse,” Rodrigo Rangel writes in the weekly Isto E. The controllers protest “is placing Brazil and its average annual traffic of 83 million passengers on the list of the most dangerous places in the world for landings, takeoffs and transit in the air, according to international organizations of aeronautical control.”

Isto E mentioned a couple of recent so-called “near misses,” including a very embarrassing one on Nov. 13 when a TAM commercial flight was suddenly ordered to take evasive action to avoid colliding with “Wonderful” Waldir Pires’ Air Force Lear jet near Brasilia.

The Isto E report goes on to note that Brazil currently has 2,600 air traffic controllers. Fifteen years ago, it had 3,200 — and air traffic has doubled since then.

The Isto E story quotes by name an official of the air traffic controllers association, a sergeant who spoke of the “system’s collapse with the saturation of our air space, our control capacity and our human resources.”

– The weekly Epoca reports:
“Pilots and flight controllers report that the transmission frequencies are ‘of lousy qualilty’ between Brasilia and Manaus. ‘Starting at a milestone known as Teres (approximately 480 kilometers north of Brasilia) there is a real blackout,’ said the pilot of a large airline company. ‘It only ends when the plane approaches Manaus.’”
Epoca adds: “This is precisely the area above the region of Serra do Cachimbo where the collision between the Gol Boeing and the Legacy Jet took place.”

–From Veja, Brazil’s largest magazine, November 25: … “The route between Brasilia and Manaus has so-called “dead areas,” in which radio voice communications are inoperative for up to 15 minutes. In other words, the pilots and flight controllers do not get in contact. The radars have blind zones — Brazil spent $1.4 billion on the Vigilance System of Amazonia [my note, this is partly a system, built by Raytheon, for detecting airborne drug traffic] but there are still blind zones in the Amazon region in which the radar does not manage to detect the planes in the sky. The accident with Gol Boeing occurred in one of these blind zones. Parts of radar that cover other regions have more than 20 years of use and do not receive adequate maintenance. …”

–And if you think air-traffic control chaos is the only thing to worry about if you’re traveling in Brazil, consider these items just off the police blotter:

–Sunday, November 26 — A group of 18 British tourists were robbed of all their hand luggage just minutes after leaving the airport while still in the bus that was taking them to their hotel in Copacabana Saturday night. They were on their way to the hotel when their bus was cut off by a vehicle with four men inside. After cutting in front of the bus, three men who identified themselves as policemen ordered the bus driver to open the door. The driver told police that one of the robbers was carrying a grenade while the others had a gun. Once inside the bus their first action was to hit one of the tourists with the gun butt. They then proceeded to take all the hand luggage the tourists were carrying. (My note: This is the third time this year that an airport-hotel shuttle carrying tourists has been robbed in a similar manner).

AND THIS:

–RIO DE JANEIRO, November 24 (Xinhua) — Brazilian police on Friday found the body of a kidnapped Italian entrepreneur Vicenzo Nazzaro on the floor of an apartment in downtown Blumenau, in the southern state of Santa Catarina. … The 55-year-old Nazzaro, who owned 42 properties in Santa Catarina, was kidnapped along with his sister-in-law on Thursday evening after arriving at the airport in the state’s capital of Florianopolis. Two men, who identified themselves as federal agents, pretended to have orders to arrest the entrepreneur and the woman, and took them to the apartment in Blumenau. They demanded $200,000 from Nazzaro. The sister-in-law was sent to another town to get the money but did not return in time to prevent the visiting entrepreneur from being murdered.

–ends

Lots of news from Brazil today, where some of the more important publications have really got cracking on the problems with Brazilian air traffic control and the ensuing coverups. I’ll post some excerpts later today after I get decent translations.

I get a lot of questions about where the pilots are and how they’re doing. So here’s a look at the two American pilots living large in detainment at Copacabana beach in Rio, thanks to good old Brazzil.com today. Also, don’t miss the truly wonderful quote at the end from who else but Wonderful Waldir.

American Pilots Detained in Brazil Don’t Appreciate Presidential Suite
Written by Francesco Neves
Sunday, 26 November 2006
Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino, the American pilots of the Legacy executive jet, which collided on September 29 with Gol’s Boeing 737 over the Brazilian Amazon resulting in the death of all 154 people aboard, may be housed in the presidential suite of a five-star hotel in the glamorous beach of Copacabana, but they don’t seem even for a second to be enjoying the compulsory vacation courtesy of the Brazilian authorities.

Lepore and Paladino have had their American passport confiscated and they have been forced to stay confined in Rio’s JW Marriott hotel.

The pilots have been spending most of their time, according to hotel workers, locked inside their room watching TV, surfing the Internet and talking to friends and relatives in the Net or the telephone.

The [hotel] … offers breathtaking views of the Sugar Loaf and the Corcovado and Copacabana beach is just across de street from their room, the Yankees keep their curtains closed. Although the Marriott also has several restaurants … as well as a swimming pool, sauna and a fitness center, the two pilots seem to be enjoying none of that.

Their employer, New-York-based ExcelAire, the air-taxi company that bought the Legacy involved in the accident, is picking up the tab. The bill has already surpassed $115,000 with the hotel charging a $2,000 daily rate. Food, laundry and other expenses are all extra. The Brazilian contribution: they have been kept on a 24-hour watch.

… Theo Dias, the pilot’s lawyer, … told Brazilian reporters: “Everybody is talking a lot about the trauma air traffic controllers are going through, but the same is happening to the pilots. And in their case they are in a foreign country, far from their families and insecure in regard to their future.”

… In the Marriott’s top floor, the 17th, where Lepore and Paladino are staying, security guards in the corridor maintain an around-the-clock vigil to prevent the presence of any stranger. A black cloth covers a window to the corridor in a way that people cannot see from outside what’s going on at that floor.

In their classically-decorated 970-sq-feet suite the pilots have two living rooms, two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a kitchen. The place is reserved under their name until December 15.

Meanwhile, Brazilian Defense Minister, Waldir Pires, who has taken center stage in the whole affair of the planes collision and its aftermath, a chaotic situation the airports, continues issuing almost daily declarations.

This Saturday, November 25, Pires denied that the ousting of lieutenant-brigadier Paulo Roberto Cardoso Vilarinho from the Decea (Air Space Control Department) had anything to do with the current crisis in the aviation sector in Brazil.

“The leadership change,” he told reporters in São Paulo, “is a routine measure.” Vilarinho who had been clashing with the minister was until Friday, Brazil’s air space honcho. Pires once again denied that Brazil has blind spots in its communication network.

“The information I have,” he said, “is that these black holes don’t exist. I am not an expert, but the Air Force has these data. If the holes existed I’m sure I would have been informed. This is my expectation at least.” …

–END

Remember, Wonderful Waldir says: “NO BLIND SPOTS HERE! DO YOU SEE ANY BLIND SPOTS? DAMMIT, I’M CALLING IN SICK. I’M FLYING TO RIO. WELL NO, NOT FLYING. A MAN OF MY STANDING CAN’T SPEND THE NIGHT SLEEPING ON AN AIRPORT BENCH. I’M DRIVING TO RIO. YEAH, THAT’S IT. CALL MY DRIVER.”

This just in, via Brazzil.com (And I have no idea what they think the word “digladiated” means):

[[OOPS: Later note: Turns out the translator for Brazzil.com speaks better English than I do. Websters Revised Unabridged Dictionary defines "degladiate" as "to fight like gladiators, to contend fiercely, to dispute violently." Far as I'm concerned, it's a keeper. Thanks to Jason Smith for pointing this out.]]

{{And appended to the bottom of Brazzil.com story,an excerpt from today’s O Globo, in which air traffic controllers say that despite the authorities’ assurances that there are no “blind” zones in Amazon air-traffic control coverage, there is in fact a “‘blind, deaf and mute zone’ in the Amazon, when you lose absolutely all contact with the aircrafts.”}}

So who ya gonna believe, the authorities scrambling to protect turf and access to the honeypot of an ATC budget, or the hard-working air traffic controllers lyin’ eyes?

Anyway, here’s the Brazzil.com story:

Written by Rodolfo Espinoza
Saturday, 25 November 2006

After watching the country’s air crisis from a distance while his Defense Minister, Air Force commander and flight controllers digladiated and brought Brazil’s commercial aviation to its knees, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva decided to intervene in the chaos.

And started by firing Paulo Roberto Cardoso Vilarinho, the Air Space Control Department (Decea) chief, the man in charge of all the air traffic control centers in the country. The cleaning up included the Decea’s second in command, vice-director major brigadier Ailton dos Santos Pohlmann.

While there is talk in Brasília that Defense Minister Waldir Pires is next in the line of sacking he is still being backed by the government since the firing decision published in the Diário Oficial (Daily Gazette) this Friday, November 24, sported his signature.

Vilarinho’s decision to quarter Brasília’s controllers preventing them from leaving the control tower for days when they staged a work-to-rule campaign, earlier this month, coupled with his opposition to a bigger role for civilians in the Brazilian air controlling structure made his continuance in the post untenable. Flight controllers have been staging a not so-silent rebellion against him.

To temporarily fill up the two vacated positions were chosen major-brigadier Paulo Hortênsio Albuquerque Silva, the chief of the Third Comar (Regional Air Command) and major-brigadier Ramon Borges Cardoso, who was serving as chief of cabinet for Air Force commander, Luiz Carlos Bueno, another man who has been at odds with the Defense Minister.

Minister Pires and just-fired Vilarinho have something in common though: both agree that the Brazilian air space has no blind spots. Something that the air controllers vehemently dispute.

In testimonies given the Federal Police in the last few days 13 flight controllers insisted that Brazil not only has a blind zone, it has what they called a “blind, deaf and mute” zone in the Amazon, an area in which no contact is possible between the control tower and airplanes.

On another aerial front, the Military Justice’s general prosecutor, Giovanni Rattacaso accused the president of the Air Traffic Controllers Brazilian Association, Wellington Rodrigues, of promoting “terrorism” in order to hide mistakes made by air controllers in the case involving Brazil’s worst air accident ever, the collision between a Boeing 737 and a Legacy executive jet, that resulted in the death of the 154 people inside the Boeing.

Rattacaso is in charge of investigating the investigations being made by the Brazilian Air Force (FAB) on possible mistakes made by their own personnel, since air control in Brazil is an attribution of the FAB.

According to Rattacaso, Rodrigues was the Cindacta’s 1 (Brasília’s Air Control Center) supervisor on September 29, the day the Boeing tragedy occurred, but he wasn’t at his post at the time of the accident.

Rattacaso says that he has reason to believe that the work-to-rule campaign unleashed just before the All Souls Day holiday (November 2), was planned by Rodrigues to “divert the attention from his conduct in the case, imputing the accident to an air control system mistake.” And adds: “He is involved in this case and there is also evidence that he is guilty.”

Rodrigues says in his defense that the day of the accident he was only working as instructor of novice air controllers and vows to sue the prosecutor for what he calls groundless charges.

AND THIS EXCERPT, MORE ON BLIND HOLES, FROM TODAY’S REPORT ON THE SAME SUBJECT BY O GLOBO:

…In addition, soon after the accident involving the Gol Boeing and the Legacy, which occurred on September 29 killing 154 people, Vilarinho stated there are no shadow areas in the country’s air traffic control. He added there is no black hole in the area where the collision took place.

But the 13 flight controllers of the centers of São José dos Campos (SP) and Brasília, in depositions to the Federal Police in the last four days, stated that there is a “blind, deaf and mute” zone in the Amazon, when you lose absolutely all contact with the aircrafts.

–end

Meanwhile, while these characters play whack-a-mole, the two American pilots, Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino, remain in custody in Rio. It is now Day 57.

For those of you who manage to slog through these long posts following this Brazil saga, I promise to learn how to link here rather than cut and paste. Over the weekend. Meanwhile, this, from O Estado de S Paulo via the online magazine Brazzil.com

Brazilian Air Tragedy: Legacy’s Controller Isn’t Fit for the Post
Written by Francesco Neves
Thursday, 23 November 2006
The Brazilian air traffic controller who was monitoring the Legacy executive jet that collided on September 29 with a Boeing 737 killing all 154 people aboard wasn’t prepared for the job and had been just rushed into the position by insistence of the military brass, against the objection of his instructor who didn’t agree with the arrangement.

This new piece of information is being published today, November 23, by the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, which says that the Brazilian Air Force authorities’ insistence in approving new flight controllers due to the serious lack of staff may have led to Brazil’s air tragedy ever.

The controller in charge of the Legacy, which was piloted by two Americans, says the newspaper, after interviewing other flight controllers from Brasília, had little hands-on experience and had received his certification earlier this year, well after his class’s colleagues.

Instructors have been critical of a system that puts pressure on them to let controllers pass the exam even when they are not ready for the demanding job.

… Commenting on the man responsible for the Legacy, a Brasília instructor said that he was not up to the task:

“Not because he was incompetent but because he was someone who had difficulty concentrating. Several times he was warned that he couldn’t be that absentminded. This is not his fault, but it is a character trait that in normal circumstances would have prevented him from being qualified for the post. However, after much insistence, he managed to be approved.”

And he added: “During his instruction, it was evident that he was slow, but this the kind of work that requires agility.”

Even after the Boeing tragedy, some controllers disclosed, the Air Force continued trying to bring unqualified Air Defense sergeants to work in the civilian air traffic control. More recently, however, instructors are refusing to accept those who have not enough training.

“This is not an English language course that you can increase the number of classes so that people can learn faster. Here, each dot represents 150 lives,” says the instructor.

Another information that just came to light is that at the time of the collision between the Legacy and the Boeing the air traffic controllers’ supervisor at the Brasília tower, also known as Cindacta 1, wasn’t at his post. The men in the tower had no supervision because the lieutenant who should be there had to take over for an Air Force chief at the main control room.

The Air Force is not making any comment on this absence, maintaining that the details of what happened in the control tower on September 29 are object of official investigation.

They also refuse to talk about reports that the controller in charge of the small jet was not qualified for the task. Defense Minister, Waldir Pires, however, repeated this Wednesday, November 22, that all professionals in the Brazilian air traffic control are fully qualified.

–end