Here's an update on the situation of the investigation in Brazil. I'm not a pilot, or a lawyer. I try to pay attention, though.
The aviation investigating commission held a general meeting at the end of November 2007, which should have started the clock on the 60-day comment period. However, in December, the Legacy pilots and the ATC controllers agreed to speak to the investigators. Which put the final report on hold. Col. Rufino, heading the investigation, was in the U.S. in December 2007, but schedule conflicts prevented a meeting with the pilots. Information from the January 17 Folha de S.Paulo.
The criminal trial in the Sinop, Mato Grosso, federal court is awaiting a decision by a superior court on whether that court or a military court has jurisdiction to try the air traffic controllers. Over a year ago the Military Prosecutor-General said on the radio that it's a matter for the common, not the military, courts, so it's hard to see this as a knotty legal question.
In the U.S., over a hundred civil suits have been unified into a single case in the Federal Court in Brooklyn, under judge Brian Cogan. Lawyers had until just about New Years to submit additional documents and arguments on whether the suits should be heard in the U.S., or sent to Brazil. He is to decide the question around the start of April. U.S. courts would award a multiple of what Brazilian courts would, so it's by far the most important question in the suits. The Brazilian lawyer with the second-largest number of clients in the accident says he expects the cases to be heard in the U.S. He admits his fees would be higher if that's the case, so he may be engaged in wishful thinking.
Questions were asked here on the Gol 1907 black box. The last minute or so of the black box were played on Brazil's TV Record on December 9. You can find the clip online on the network's site, although I can't find a way to link directly. The site is
http://www.mundorecordnews.com.br/record.jsp . Put your mouse on "TV Record", then "Domingo Espetacular", click, and a menu of clips appears, some forty pages' worth. Currently it's on page 18. The title of the segment is "9/12 Os minutos finais do acidente da Gol", and currently it's on page 18. Easiest is to put "18" in the lower-rightmost field on the screen, click on the arrow, and browse from there. It's nine minutes, 15 seconds.
It is, of course, in Portuguese.
The recording is accompanied by a CGI simulation that's inaccurate to the point of fraud. It shows the airplane reaching the treetops almost intact. Four times. At 3:47, 4:48, 6:49 and at 8:31. The flight recorder stopped at about 7,800 feet, as the plane came apart. The debris was scattered in a 500 meter arc, and bodies, their clothes ripped off by the wind, were found atop the first fragment discovered. The cockpit was intact, though, with the pilots' bodies found inside.
The clip also included commentary by a Brazilian pilot, who after doing instant, and inaccurate, analysis of a series of Brazilian airplane accidents, starred in one in January. You can read about him here:
http://sharkeyonbrazil.*************...his-plane.html
The Brazilian says he has no doubt the American pilots are to blame for the crash. He also says that the Gol pilots lowered the landing gear to slow the plane, although the lever in the cockpit was in the retracted position. And that most of the passengers reached the ground alive, if they had their seatbelts fastened. Despite the fuselage being scattered over half a kilometer of the Amazon forest.
The one I like best though, is where he says the pilots turned the engines off to bring the Boeing to the ground in a glide. While I am not a pilot, that seems to cross the line from the ridiculous to the absurd.
The CPI, or parliamentary commission of inquiry, that looked at the aviation crisis including the Gol crash proposed a bill on the manner in which aviation accidents are investigated. This page
http://www.camara.gov.br/internet/si....asp?id=377306 says the bill "Legislates on the System for the Prevention of Aeronautic Accidents (SIPAER), the inviolability of the secrecy of its investigations and other measures."
The progress of the bill can be followed at the address above, but it will probably be like following continental drift.
The bill seems to be heavily influenced by the accident investigation bureau, CENIPA. It attempts, for example, to explain that when an investigation finds something that might have been a factor in the accident, and therefore could be a factor in a future accident, recommendations are made to fix the problem. But that doesn't mean that the factor actually played a role in the accident being investigated.
While the bill attempts to maintain the independence and primacy of aeronautic investigations, it does not take a stand on criminalization. On black box recordings, the accompanying explanation says that the flight recorder would go to Cenipa, and then to the police. The police might have to make their own transcription, despite the additional cost, as a way of insuring the independence of the Cenipa investigation.
From the point of view of pilots, however, the bill says that if you are involved in an aviation accident in Brazil, the black box will go to the police. And, based on experience, it will then be leaked to the press and the public at large.
- Richard