Pilots Say Brazilians Drew Flight Plan

The flight plan for an American corporate jet that collided with an airliner over the Amazon jungle 11 days ago was prepared not by its two Long Island pilots but by the plane's Brazilian manufacturer, according to the pilots' statements to authorities.

Joseph Lepore, 42, of Bay Shore, and Jan Paladino, 34, of Westhampton Beach, also insisted in their depositions that they had authorization from air traffic controllers in two locations to fly at 37,000 feet, the altitude at which the collision occurred.

Those details, reported in the Brazilian press and confirmed by aviation sources in this country, could bolster the contention of some aviation experts in the U.S. and Brazil that the pilots may not be the only ones at fault. They say a series of errors by various participants, including the pilots, led to the crash of Gol Airlines Flight 1907 and the loss of all 154 aboard.

But many officials in Brazil continue to blame the pilots for the country's worst air disaster. They say it might have made sense for Embraer - the Brazilian company that was familiar with the local airspace and that built the Legacy executive jet and had just turned it over to its new owner, ExcelAire of Ronkonkoma - to prepare the flight plan.

They insisted that it was still the pilots' responsibility to make sure it did not conflict with other air traffic.

José Carlos Pereira, president of Empresa Brasileira de InfraEstrutura Aeroportuária (Infraero), the agency that handles logistics and meteorology for air transport in Brazil, told The State of Saõ Paulo newspaper that "the pilot, the highest authority in a plane, knows very well when he is on the right way in a two-way aeroway."

Pereira said the traffic corridors north of Brasilia where the impact occurred are set up so that planes flying north, such as the Legacy, are routed at even-numbered altitudes such 36,000 feet. Aircraft heading south, such the Gol Boeing, would be at odd-numbered altitudes.

"Every pilot knows that," Pereira said, so the Legacy should have descended to 36,000 feet hundreds of miles before the site of the impact.

Embraer spokesman Pedro Ferraz declined to comment on the flight plan. "The company is providing full support to the aeronautical authorities for the investigations," he said. "We do not comment on any other rumor or report."

The Folha newspaper of Saõ Paolo on Sunday printed more details from the depositions of the American pilots, whose plane was damaged but landed without injury to the seven aboard.

It said Lepore said he left the cockpit a few minutes before the impact to go the bathroom and then came back and saw Paladino trying to reach controllers without success. Then he heard a noise, but felt no impact.

Lepore also told investigators he had trained for 20 hours in a Legacy simulator and five hours flying a Legacy before the flight, the Folha story said. Lepore said he never saw the Gol Boeing jet and that his vision was impaired by the position of the sun. He said there was no alert from the anti-collision system, the paper said.

Paladino said the jet's location transponder seemed to be working properly before and after the impact, the newspaper said.

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