Aviation attorneys Steven C. Marks and Ricardo M. Martinez-Cid with the Podhurst Orseck law firm filed 59 wrongful death complaints related to the tragedy in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

In addition to TAM, which is charged with its own negligence and that of its pilots and maintenance personnel, the defendants in the lawsuits are Pegasus Aviation IV, Inc.; Airbus S.A.S.; Airbus Industrie G.I.E. (EADS) (EAD.PA); Airbus Customer Services, Inc.; Goodrich Corporation NYSE: GR; and International Aero Engines AG.

"Responsibility not only lies with the companies that manufactured and handled maintenance for the aircraft," said Marks, "We believe Airbus provided inadequate customer support, simulator services, and training materials for the pilots and flight crew that replicates the performance of the aircraft in all normal and abnormal conditions."

Marks said it's clear the flight crew knew there were problems with the aircraft before the disaster because the plane's right thrust reverser had been deactivated before the flight.

"The thrust reverser is used to slow the jet down upon landing. Without an operational right thrust reverser, it didn't have enough room to stop on the runway, ending in a horrific crash when the plane skidded off the runway's edge," he argue.

Podhurst Orseck filed the first lawsuit related to the crash on behalf of the family of 35-year-old Ricardo Tazoe of Miami, an employee with Banco Santander. In all of the cases, the plaintiffs are seeking a jury trial to recover financial damages for pain and suffering; lost value of life; funeral expenses; and all other damages they may be entitled to under the law.

This is not the first Brazilian air disaster handled by Marks and Martinez-Cid. They currently represent the families of several passengers who were killed when Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907 collided with an Embraer Legacy 600 business jet over the Amazon Rainforest on September 29 2006. All 154 people aboard died in which was then called Brazil's worst plane accident.

The American attorneys have represented victims in other major commercial airline crashes, including those killed in the crash of Comair Flight 5191 at the Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Kentucky. in August 2006.

Marks has acted as co-lead trial counsel for the California State Court plaintiffs after a Silk Air crash between Jakarta and Singapore in 1997 and acted as lead liaison counsel for the state court and federal multi- district litigation plaintiffs' steering committees over the ValuJet Flight 592 crash in Miami-Dade County in 1996.

Based in Miami, Podhurst Orseck, P.A. concentrates exclusively in trial and appellate litigation. The firm's general tort practice places a major emphasis on aviation, automobile, products liability and medical malpractice litigation.

In a press release distributed yesterday, April 26, the association says that they are seeking signatures asking for support from the people so that Brazilian authorities will conclude, "quickly but justly," the investigations and then inform the community and the relatives about the results that have yet to be published.

The signatures will be delivered to the Minister of the Justice of Brazil, Tarso Genro, in the first week of May, with the "intention of preserving the constitutional rights of the victims of the tragedy that occurred on September 29, 2006" says the document.

This petition is being put together by Rosane Gutjhar, in partnership with the Association Vice-President, Angelita de Marchi. Their primary focus will be the assignment of responsibility.

Seven months after the accident allegedly provoked by the Legacy Jet, part of the American company ExcelAire, nothing has been explained, comments Rosane Gutjhar. "We have mounds of paper, but no conclusion. We want to see the guilty parties punished for they have taken innocent lives and no money in the world will restore that," she points out.

This week, there will also be a trial in Brazil's Superior Tribunal de Justiça (STJ) seeking to release the information contained in the investigation done by the Brazilian Air Force to the families of the accident victims.

"The information therein contained is crucial for the families’ interests," explains lawyer Leonardo Amarante. The families do not have the details of the investigation, including the contents of the aircraft black box, or the results of the tests performed on the pilots or the Legacy Jet inspection.

Leonardo Amarante is the lawyer of the office that represents the 50 Brazilian victims families of Gol 1907 Flight in Brazil and in the U.S. He is also the lawyer of the vice-president of the Association of Friends and Relatives of the GOL 1907 Flight Victims, Angelita Rosicler de Marchi.

The Brazilian Federal Police requested an additional 60 days to present the police investigation results. It will not be until after the close of the investigation process that the suit against those involved will be filed with the Public Ministry of Brazil.

The manifesto written (in Portuguese) by the Association can be found at www.petitiononline.com/voog1907/petition.html.

A federal judge from Sinop, a little city in the north of Cuiabá, capital of Mato Grosso state, dismissed the pilots request to get their passports back so that they can return to the United States.

Lepore and Paladino were detained in Rio de Janeiro soon after the executive jet Legacy they were piloting collided on September 29 with a Boeing 737 over the Brazilian Amazon jungle killing all 154 people aboard the Gol’s aircraft.

Lawyer Theo Dias, who is representing the pilots, announced that he will appeal the verdict and released a note criticizing the judge’s decision:

"Among all the professionals involved in the accident, only the pilots suffer curtailment in their right of coming and going, which constitutes discriminatory treatment that will be questioned by means of a habeas corpus."

Dias had filed his petition last week initially with Brazil’s Superior Justice Tribunal, but that higher court sent the request to the lower tribunal in Mato Grosso, the state where the accident occurred. 

The Brazilian Federal police of Rio de Janeiro confiscated the Americans’ passport on October 3 when the pilots went to Rio for medical exams.

At that time, the authorities alleged that that would be the only way to guarantee they would be able to hear the pilots in the course of the accident’s investigation.

Brazilian Defense minister, Waldir Pires, promises that the preliminary conclusion of the probe will be presented this week.

Said the minister, "It is not going to be the final report, but I guarantee that it is going to be something very close to that. It is an important instrument not only to tell who are the culprits, but especially to teach us about what happened so that we can prevent new tragedies like this one from occurring."

All 154 people aboard Gol Airlines flight 1907 were killed on September 29 when the Boeing 737 crashed into Brazil’s dense Amazon rainforest after clipping the Embraer Legacy 600 executive jet. The smaller executive plane, which managed to land safely, was piloted by two Long Island men: Joseph Lepore of Bay Shore, N.Y., and Jan Palladino, of Westhampton Beach, N.Y.

According to the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, the flight recorder shows Mr. Lepore receiving instructions from the tower in São José dos Campos to fly northwest at 37,000 feet "until Eduardo Gomes," the airport in Manaus. That altitude contradicted the pilots’ filed flight plan as well as established norms, which reserve odd-numbered altitudes for southbound flights.

Defense Ministry spokeswoman Flávia de Oliveira said she could not confirm Folha’s report but added more information could come Monday after Brazilian Air Force officials returned from Canada where the black boxes from the two planes were sent for analysis.

Folha did not reveal how it had obtained the transcript. The Air Force, which oversees Brazil’s air traffic controllers, has not yet released it to Brazilian federal police investigating the crash, or to the National Transportation Safety Board investigators who are participating in the probe.

The Legacy’s pilots – employees of ExcelAire Service Inc. of Ronkonkoma, N.Y. – were flying the Brazilian-made jet on its maiden voyage back to New York, and managed to land the badly damaged jet safely. They’ve been ordered to stay in Brazil during the investigation.

A lawyer for ExcelAire said the Folha report supported the pilot’s testimony to investigators.

"As we’ve maintained from the beginning, the pilots were cleared to Manaus for flight at three seven zero (37,000 feet) at the time of departure and we’re confident that anyone that is able to hear the tower tapes or see a transcript of the instructions issued by the São José tower will hear the exact same thing," said the lawyer Robert Torricella.

The tower instructions reported by Folha may have been the first of a series of problems that led to the crash. As the Legacy approached Brasí­lia, the plane lost radio contact with the control tower. The Legacy’s transponder, which signals the plane’s location to the tower and other airplanes, also stopped working.

Just what prevented the radio and transponder from working remains unclear, but from that point on, both the pilots and the air traffic controllers lacked critical information. Controllers had no way of knowing the smaller plane’s altitude.

Brazilian officials have insisted that the Legacy should have returned to its original flight plan after losing contact with the control tower. That plan would have mostly kept the smaller jet at 36,000 feet after Brasilia, and out of the path of the 737, which was flying at its customary altitude of 37,000 feet. Instead, both planes remained on a collision course.

But aviation experts say air traffic controller orders always take precedence over flight plans. They’ve also questioned why the controllers didn’t order the larger jet to change course just to be safe, since they lacked altitude information on the smaller jet at the time.

Mercopress

In the transcript of the conversation obtained by weekly news magazine Veja the Cindacta 1 control center, based in Brazilian capital Brasí­lia asks the Legacy plane piloted by Americans Joe Lepore and Jan Paladin to change their radio frequency, and then they maintain the following dialogue:

Legacy –  Brasí­lia, N600 transferring.

Controller –  N600 squawk identification, maintaining flight level 370, under radar surveillance.

Legacy –  Roger.

According to the magazine’s explanation, in the first sentence, the Legacy pilot tells Brasí­lia that he has understood the message and that he has changed his radio frequency. N600 is the small plane’s call sign.

In his response, the air controller asks the pilot to identify his airplane through the transponder – squawk in aviation lingo – and he then instructs the Legacy to maintain its altitude at 37,000 feet.

The expression "under radar surveillance" indicates that the radar would be controlling the flight. Answering "Roger" the pilot confirms that he understood the directions. 

Apparently the Legacy pilot assumed that from that time on he wouldn’t need to get in touch with air control anymore and that any change would be conveyed from the control tower to the pilot. According to the air controller’s manual, a plane under radar surveillance is not required to inform its position to the ATC since the aircraft is being followed closely by the air controllers. 

"The correct would have been for the controller to complement his sentence, warning that the altitude of 37.000 feet was valid just through Brasí­lia. It seems that there was a problem of communication between the pilot and the air control," says Brazilian major-brigadeer Renato Cláudio Costa Pereira, who was the general secretary of the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) from 1997 to 2003.

Brasí­lia’s air controllers have told investigators that they tried to reach the Legacy’s pilots five times without success. While there is a possibility that the radio’s volume was too low or even that the pilots turned the equipment off, it’s common knowledge, according to Veja, that communications over the Amazon skies between  Brasí­lia and Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state, are often disrupted.

"Planes may remain up to 15 minutes without contact with the control tower. The same happens in the stretch between Manaus and Caracas," says Varig airline’s commander í‰lnio Borges, who is the director of the National Union of Aircraft Workers. The only solution in this case, he says, is to install new antennas in the area since they are too far apart.

After flying over Brasí­lia the Legacy’s transponder stopped working. According to the magazine, the Cindacta’s computers then malfunctioned. Although they couldn’t know the altitude of the small plane the computers automatically adjusted the altitude to 36,000 feet, while in fact the Legacy was at 37,000, in the same level as the Boeing 737 flying in the opposite direction.

The air controllers trusted the new information. 40 minutes later the crash with Gol’s Flight 1907 occurred over the Amazon jungle.

At the same time they suggest that the police should not interfere in the work of the aviation experts. Brazil should resist any public pressure and should not rush to judge all those involved in the case, says the Foundation.

The note reminds that traditionally the Cenipa, Brazil’s Center for Investigation of Aeronautical Accidents has been able to conduct its job without outside interference and urges that once again the organ be allowed to act independently.
 
On Wednesday, October 4, the Brazilian Federal Police opened an inquiry to find out whether the pilot and the copilot of the Legacy jet that collided with Gol’s Boeing 737, killing 154 people, in the Brazil’s worst air accident ever, should be blamed for the tragedy.
 
Here’s the Flight Safety Foundation note:
 
The Flight Safety Foundation today encouraged Brazilian authorities so continue in their long-standing tradition of thorough aviation accident investigation with minimal interference from law enforcement in the case of the recent tragic accident involving a Gol Airlines aircraft.
 
"Brazil has always been a shining example of how to investigate an aviation accident or incident," commented Foundation president and CEO Bill Voss. "Traditionally, the Center for Investigation of Aeronautical Accidents (Cenipa) has conducted investigations with no interference from law enforcement.

"This allows an efficient investigation to proceed and answers to be found. In the case of clear negligence, appropriate civil and administrative remedies exist to deal with this tragedy after all the facts are in."
 
The Brazilian government is a member of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Council and was part of the global consensus supporting the amendment Annex 13, to protect accident investigations from prosecutorial involvement until the investigation is concluded.
 
"We call on the Brazilian government to stay strong in the face of  immense public pressure and continue to respect the integrity of the investigation and not rush to judge the various players in this accident," Voss continued. "We join all of Brazil in mourning this terrible loss, but strongly urge that the Cenipa be allowed to do its job without interference so that accidents like this can be avoided in the future."