Face Possible Criminal Manslaughter Charges

Two American pilots of an Embraer Legacy 600 who survived a mid-air collision with a Gol Airlines Boeing 737, deny they turned off their transponder before the accident that caused loss of the airliner, and all onboard.

Brazilian authorities insist the Embraer should have been at 36,000 feet, but the plane was actually cruising a thousand feet higher -- the same altitude as the Gol 737.

The allegation of transponder tampering, if proven true, would make the pilots liable for criminal manslaughter. On Wednesday, Brazilian prosecutors said they would charge the Americans if they found the transponder was deliberately turned off.

"We know that the transponder was turned off," said Jose Carlos Pereira, the head of Brazil's airports authority, the Estado De Sao Paulo newspaper reported but prosecutors admitted the next day there was not enough evidence to accuse anybody, according to the Associated Press.

"We don't have elements to talk about that," Federal Police investigator Renato Sayao told the government news service Agencia Brasil. He said the collision and crash will be considered a crime if it's proven that there was human error involved, though there was no reference to the allegations that two tower controllers contributed to the accident because of improper clearances.

The Brazilian Air Force said it investigated air traffic controllers' procedures on the day of the crash and found no irregularities, the AP continued.

In the meantime, the two pilots Joseph Lepore and Jan Paladino, both from New York State, repeatedly insist they never turned off the device that transmits a plane's location and altitude and believed that it was working just before the collision.

Their Brazilian lawyer, Jose Carlos Dias dismissed the charge as "nonsense", and told Globo TV that "they had no reason to do that."

In the meantime, the two Americans are not under arrest, but their passports have been confiscated, effectively preventing them from returning home.

Gol Airlines has since revised the number of dead in the crash down from 155, to 154 lost.

 FMI: http://www.dac.gov.br/principalIng/index.asp