The Morning News: Gone to Hell

John ("Bombsaway") McCain compliments the late Reverend Jerry Falwell on his new designer devil suit, purchased with donations from the poor. The horns are on special order from a rhinoceros smuggler, the Reverand confided.

A Beach That Will Blow You Away ... PLUS: A Summer Guide to the Jersey Shore (No, Really)

Your tax dollars at work, replenishing Surf City's beaches.


Among other things that I am a crank about (oh, you didn't know there were more?) is the 127-mile long New Jersey seashore, which ought to be one of the natural wonders and great travel destinations of the Northeast, but isn't.

(Nevertheless, some personal evaluations of various Jersey Shore towns that do welcome visitors, to one degree or another, are listed in the second half of this post).

What draws me to the Jersey Shore today is rather alarming news that more than 1,000 unexploded bombs and other munitions have been detected lurking in the vast quantity of sand that the Army Corps of Engineers -- the Keystone Kops of public-works bureaucracies -- has dredged up and deposited as part of a $70 million beach-erosion replenishment project in a seashore town called Surf City. The explosives, which apparently date from World War I, have "the potential to cause loss of limb, of eyesight and, under the right circumstances, (italics mine) to cause loss of life," the Army Corps of Engineers said, employing a particularly hamhanded turn of phrase.

That project is, in turn, part of the Corps' vast, endless and utterly useless quest to funnel tax money into replacing beaches that no one ought to be building expensive houses on because the ocean is just going to keep eroding the sand.

Residents on those beaches include many people who fully expect the government to bail them out and replace their houses, or replenish beaches on their pretty, exclusive seashore enclaves, when the ocean does what the ocean does, which is push sand around and occasionally flood beachfronts. That's especially true for the coastal barrier islands that most New Jersey seashore towns are located on.

Beautiful as much of it is, the reason the Jersey Shore is not much of a national tourist attraction is that outsiders are not welcome on vast stretches of it.

In the haughtier beach towns, day-trippers are especially discouraged -- partly by attitude and mostly by lack of parking and quirky beach-fee regulations. In some of these towns, homeowners rule, with seasonal renters in a secondary role. Monthly and two-week renters are merely tolerated. Day-trippers are looked upon with horror.

In Surf City, of course, the presence of bombs in the sand has created concern about the summer season. Beachgoers are now being warned not to use their little sand-castle shovels to dig more than a few inches into the sand, for fear of triggering a bomb. A local shop owner is selling tee-shirts that say: "Our Beach Will Blow You Away."

Yes, only in Jersey.

Surf City, incidentally, is one of the less-restrictive seashore towns on Long Beach Island, a beautiful but precariously situated barrier island, 21 miles long, a half mile wide, and a mere 6 feet above sea level. On the other hand, Surf City does tell you that you need to make a phone call to order beach badges.

It is widely believed by coastal scientists, by the way, that Long Beach Island, which has not experienced a major hurricane or winter storm since it was virtually wiped out by a storm in pre-development days in 1962, is a disaster waiting to happen. And just wait till taxpayers get the bill for that sucker.

Starting in the late 1960s, exclusive little Long Beach Island enclaves like Harvey Cedars and Loveladies became dotted and then crowded with expensive beach-front mansions and a lot of new (and often politically connected) residents who, as I said, 1. Demand beach renewal every time the beach erodes, as it does regularly, and 2. Go to clever lengths to discourage outsiders from intruding on those taxpayer funded beaches, while insisting that the beaches are technically open to everyone.

In the last 12 years, by my calculations (and I covered this subject regularly when I wrote a weekly column called Jersey in the New York Times in the 1990s) well over $300 million in federal and state tax money has been spent in the Army Corps of Engineer's fool's errand to prevent the ocean from shifting sand around, as the ocean is inexorably going to do, especially when said sand is a naturally shifting barrier island.

One of the great supporters of this boondoggle, incidentally, was the former New Jersey Governor, the famously dim Christine Todd Whitman, a former obscure county freeholder who became governor in 1993 after a thoroughly nasty smear campaign against the Democratic incumbent, Jim Florio.

Most of the lickspittle statehouse reporters fawned over the very wealthy Mrs. Whitman, but I referred to her as "Farmer Whitman." That's because in a state with the highest property taxes in the nation, Farmer Whitman -- in a legal ploy used by other rich New Jersey landowners -- declared her two sprawling estates (both of which have expensive residences on them) as working farms. Being "farms," they qualified for dirt cheap (so to speak) property taxes under a state policy ostensibly designed to preserve individual farms and open space, but which in fact also allows wily big private land-owners to avoid paying any more than a minute fraction of the property taxes they would otherwise owe.

In 1992, according to a story in the Newark Star-Ledger that conspicuously failed to gain real traction among the Whitman-protectors in the New Jersey and New York news media, Farmer Whitman and her husband Farmer John paid $47 in property taxes on the smaller of their estates, a 51-acre spread. They paid a whopping $148 in annual property taxes on the larger spread, a 206-acre estate in New Jersey horse country.

The farming activities on both Whitman estates, err, I mean farms, largely consisted of the sale of a few hundred dollars of firewood annually to relatives. (Other, less brazen, rich New Jersey landowners get their estates qualified for farm assessments by allowing independent people to rent a small piece of the land to run small operations like selling produce or raising a handful of Angus cattle for beef).

Farmer Whitman, of course, later joined the Bush cabinet as secretary of the Environmental Protection Agency. She's long gone back to the farm(s), where I suppose she's still growing firewood.

I mention Farmer Whitman only to highlight some of the mysteries one routinely deals with in New Jersey.

But I digress. Back to the beach.

In a story about the battle against beach erosion in New Jersey in 2000, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote in part:

"From the great stone wall of Sea Bright to the reefs off Cape May Point - dedicated by Gov. Whitman herself five years ago - an Inquirer analysis shows that in the last 50 years, federal and state taxpayers have spent at least $600 million to protect coastal real estate. Most of that is investment property."

The story quotes one of the eminent coastal geologists in the country:

"Our obligation should be toward protecting the people," said Norbert P. Psuty, a Rutgers University geologist, "but should we be protecting their investments?"

That's essentially what these monstrously expensive beach-replenishments are doing, protecting private investments. Protecting public resources is not the main goal, because much of the Jersey seashore -- crammed with those expensive beachfront homes -- is severely restricted to public access.

The Jersey shore -- whose main geological feature is barrier islands that naturally shift with the push and pull of the ocean -- routinely experiences significant beach erosion. And coastal ecologists point to the Jersey shore -- with its long history of artificially girding beaches with walls, jetties and groins that actually exacerbate beach erosion -- as the poster child illustrating how not to manage an ocean shoreline.

As a kid growing up in Philadelphia, I spent many a fine summer's day or even week in Wildwood, the once honky-tonk and now surprisingly gentrifying seashore town at the southern tip of the Jersey shore. (By quirk of geology, Wildwood does not need beach replenishment. Ironically, its beach has actually become so wide that it created a problem).

But even as a kid, or in high school, I was aware that other beach towns -- the lovely Avalon and Stone Harbor just to the north, for example -- were not especially receptive to my presence.

When challenged, the exclusive New Jersey beach towns always howl that they aren't restricted. But ask yourself why, come to think of it, there are so few hotels and motels on the Jersey shore -- Atlantic City, Wildwood and Cape May excepted?

Among the tricks some towns employ, besides an absence of public parking, are beach-tags that can be purchased only by the month or season, effectively limiting beach use to seasonal residents. Beach tags are usually supposedly available by the day, but often can't be purchased because the office selling them is closed or not easily found, or the quota for the day has been met.

Still, the Jersey shore can be pleasant enough if you choose the right spot. But remember, except for Wildwood, Atlantic City, Cape May and a few other places, there is a conspicuous dearth of hotels.

Here's a short Baedeker on the places I consider at least reasonably accessible on the Jersey Shore:

* Spring Lake -- One of the prettiest towns on the Jersey shore, with beach fees and some terrific restaurants, but you can tell they really don't want you here if you're just coming for a day at the beach. Try to find a place to park that car on a hot summer day!

* Point Pleasant Beach -- Daily beach fees for the southern half of the beach. Northern half is not open to the public at all. Lively little boardwalk. Parking available.

* Belmar -- Beach fees; pleasant replenished beach. PArking available.

* Ocean Grove A little heavy on the Methodist camp revival stuff, Ocean Grove has no bars, of course. But the beach is pleasant. They no longer close the town gates on Saturday nights to prevent people from enjoying the Sabbath. Parking difficult.

* Seaside Heights -- If you wanted to make a movie about a classic Boardwalk town, this is where you'd shoot it. But be careful, the cops are notorious for hassling young people and others who don't strictly toe the line. Dumpy hotels, motels and boarding houses, but there is that great Boardwalk with rides (including one of the great classic antique carousels with original hand-carved horses and a working mechanical Wurlitzer military band organ) and terrific junk food. A Jersey Shore day-tipper's delight. Fee for beach access, but cheap and readily available. Parking plentiful.

* Atlantic City -- Whoa, you mean they still have a beach here? Yes, not much of one, but it's free. This is the town that invented the seashore as a summertime leisure activity (I know Coney Island historians disagree, but they're wrong). However, Atlantic City is now a half-baked version of Las Vegas, without the buzz. Hotels are expensive and usually full. The famed five-mile-long Boardwalk is now casino alley, and almost all of its old eccentric charm -- Steel Pier! -- has been diligently eradicated. Strictly for shopping, dining and gambling. Parking? You could park half of Los Angeles in those casino garages.

* Ocean City -- Bills itself, absurdly, as "America's greatest family resort." Obviously, these people haven't traveled much. But it's a nice enough place, and you can do it as a day trip if you work out the driving (about 3 hours from New York). Beach erosion (you pay to pay to get on what's left of it at any given time) is a chronic problem, though they keep replenishing it (thank you, taxpayers). The Boardwalk is indeed a family treat. Note: The Methodists, summer-beach-camp spoilsports that they were, outlawed booze eons ago, and it stuck)

* Wildwood -- Hands down, the world's greatest Boardwalk, a perennial carnival with amusement piers that feature world-class roller coasters and other rides. Till 10 a.m. each day, you can rent a bike and ride the two-mile length of the Boardwalk.

Pluses: Absolutely free, white-sand beaches, wide enough to play volley-ball on and not hit another living non-playing soul in the noggin with the ball. Good nightlife, though seriously drained since Atlantic City got its second life with the arrival of casinos. Abundant parking.

Minuses: Due to an utter freak of geology, the absolutely free white-sand beaches -- in defiance of trend everywhere else on the coast -- keep getting wider. In some spots, it's now a quarter mile from the Boardwalk to the ocean's edge, giving new meaning to the term "hot-footing it."

Also, due to a reality of geography, Wildwood (actually a handful of contiguous towns all with "Wildwood in their names), is in the middle of nowhere, just above the Jersey cape, 40 miles south of Atlantic City and a good two hours from Philadelphia.

Also, while there are tons of motels (the vintage ones are marketed as examples of an indigenous "Doo-Wop" architectural style), many of them are too expensive for what they offer: thin walls, Doo-Wop-vintage furnishings, and owners with high-handed attitudes they really cannot afford to maintain anymore since Wildwood's decline from its heyday in the 60s and 70s, when it was affectionately known as Philadelphia's Riviera.

* Cape May -- Victorian gingerbread houses, yada, yada -- oh, for Christ's sake, would you people please shut up about those goddamn Victorian gingerbread houses! At the southern tip of the Jersey shore, at the point where Delaware Bay meets the ocean, Cape May has a crowded beach (there's a charge) that continually needs taxpayer-funded replenishment. There's a small Boardwalk. Lots of chi-chi shops all around. There are some truly great restaurants and a good number of top-notch B&Bs (but then, to paraphrase the cranky B&B lady in the great 1996 David O. Russell/Ben Stiller movie, "Flirting With Disaster," we are not B&B people.)

Also, Cape May is even farther away than Wildwood. It is, in fact, literally south of the Mason-Dixon line. Because its the last or first landfall on major seasonal migration routes for birds crossing the wide mouth of Delaware Bay, Cape May is very popular with birdwatchers at certain times of the year.

--ends

Pony Up

No Brazil today. Sorry. Fresh out. Maybe tomorrow.

Instead, I want to discuss riding horses, from renting a horse in Griffith Park in Los Angeles (scene of a big wildfire last week), to the purported equestrian abilities of the newly elected French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. First, let's look at Mr. Sarkozy, the media, and the horse they rode in on.

"Pony," my wife said dismissively when she saw the recent photo of Mr. Sarkozy in the saddle [above], in attire that appeared to have come from a Western Wearhouse catalog, except for the sneakers. "That is a white pony. It's about 14 hands. It is not a horse. And look at how he's sitting. He looks like a kid at a birthday party," she said.

My wife is a serious horsewoman, and she had something there. I don't know what kind of a rider Mr. Sarkozy is, but judging from the way he's sitting on that pony, leaning way back with his feet forward, it appears as if his riding experience has been confined to being led around a circle by somebody on foot holding a rope hooked to a halter.

Let's just say that when I look at Sarkozy on a horse, I am not exactly thinking of another French leader who liked to pose in the saddle, Napoleon .

There's a painting of Napoleon top right, astride one of the many stallions he rode with unbridled courage. It especially took courage to have the horse execute that magnificent rearing-like levade at what appears to be the edge of a stone drop-off, at least as depicted in the painting. How to you say, "Watch it -- one step back and you and the horse you rode in on will be going down that hill ass-over-teacups, mon Empereur" in French anyway?

(Little known fact: The emperor was famous among his troops for charging furiously into battle and promptly falling off of, or being bucked from, his steed, which any rider will tell you hurts like hell. But still, basically, the little general could ride like the wind as long as he stayed in the saddle -- and riding a stallion under any circumstances, let alone battle-charging, takes skill and guts).

Even more risible than Mr. Sarkozy sitting uneasily on a pony in his little western outfit has been the dutiful way the media bought into this stunt. Sarkozy was shown "sitting on a small white horse named Universe," one story reported. Others described him as seeking to personify himself as the proverbial "man on a white horse."

Let me reiterate:

Pony! Pony! Pony!

Posing as a cowboy, he bore "a vague resemblance to the look of George W. Bush on his Texas ranch," the French newspaper Liberation said mysteriously. Other news media noted the same thing. A sub-headline in today's story on Sarkozy in the Week in Review section of the New York Times says this: "Bush on a horse sends one signal. Sarkozy on a horse sends another."

Whoa.

Call me a cynic, but let me ask you a question: Have you ever seen George W. Bush on a horse? No, you have not. There is a reason for that. Mr. Bush, who sometimes dresses in a cowboy outfit, is afraid of horses. He cannot ride.

The President is, in other words, all hat and no horse. He has a little ranch, and on his ranch he has some cows. ... With a moo-moo here and a moo-moo there ...

Incidentally, I cringe when I see the media, here or abroad, refer to Mr. Bush, usually negatively (especially if it's coming from abroad), as a cowboy.

This is an insult to cowboys, and I know cowboys. In fact, some of my neighbors in Arizona are cowboys and cowgirls. One of them is the head wrangler at a famous dude ranch. If I had to describe the nature of a cowboy or cowgirl, whether rodeo or ranch, I would say: laconic, tough, hard-working, funny, honest, self-reliant, peace-loving, deliberate, cautious and ... oh yeah, I almost forgot: Able to ride a horse!

[Totally incidental equestrian side notes: President Reagan was a world-class horseman, as was his wife, Nancy. ... John Wayne, an OK rider at best, was famous for riding only the smallest horse that could possibly carry his considerable weight. The next time you see him on a horse in a movie, watch how his feet in the stirrups practically drag the ground. ... By unanimous consent, Roy Rogers was by far the most skilled rider among the movie cowboys.]

OK, now that that's off my mind, let's turn to Griffith Park, in Los Angeles, scene of a barn-burner of a wildfire last week.

As a business traveler, I sometimes find myself with a day free on the road. As a rider, I have found that it is surprisingly easy to get in a good ride in the most surprising places. London's Hyde Park, for example.

And even in Los Angeles, in Griffith Park -- you know, in the Hollywood Hills where the observatory, the Hollywood Bowl and that godawful crappy eyesore, the Hollywood Sign, are.

If you're a rider and you have a little extra time on a trip to Los Angeles, you can find a wonderful ride at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center and other horse rental places just on the other side of the hills in Burbank (you can even get there by subway from downtown).

Some of the 55 miles of trails were damaged in the fire, but most are open. Besides a chance for a breathtaking ride -- you can gallop for miles at a stretch on some of the trails -- you're also treated with magnificent views of Los Angeles all the way to the sea.

Well-supervised, walking trail rides are also available for inexperienced riders. White ponies can be found.

--ends

Brazil: Everybody Wants to Get Inta the Act

Before they were released in December after being detained in Brazil for 71 days following the tragic Sept. 29 crash, the accused American pilots, Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino, were required, as a condition of having their passports returned, to sign a n agreement that they would return to Brazil, if summoned for criminal court proceedings. ... Not Congressional hearings.

Now Brazil's Congress has got into the act [apologies to Jimmy Durante, top left, who always complained that everybody wanted inta the act, and to Brazil's own Carmen ("Bananas Is My Business") Miranda, right].

Congress is embarking on hearings on the crash, as well as on the antics of air-traffic controllers who shut down or severely disrupted Brazil's air traffic on numerous occasions after the disaster in what was widely seen as a warning not to send blame for the crash their way. [It was also a protest, the controllers said with some justification, about poor equipment and terrible working conditions at air-traffic control centers].

Now a grandstander on one of the congressional committees is making noises about arresting the pilots to ensure they appear before his committee. And yes, the phrase ending with .. "and whose army?" does come to mind. Excerpts from Friday's Folha Online. Translation, as always, by our indefatigable Sao Paulo bureau chief, Richard Pedicini:

CPI threatens to ask for arrest of Legacy pilots to hear testimony

ANDREZA MATAIS
GABRIELA GUERREIRO
of Folha Online, in Brasilia

The Aerial Blackout CPI has concluded that the pilots of the Legacy jet - which collided with the Gol Boeing last year - should testify before the commission to clarify details of the accident. If they do not, the CPI is considering asking for the arrest of North Americans Jan Paul Paladino and Joseph Lepore.

The vice-president of the CPI, congressman Eduardo Cunha (PMDB-Rio de Janeiro), told the Folha Online that this understanding is based on a document that the two pilots signed on leaving Brazil after having been detained by the Federal Police at the time of the accident. They signed a pledge in which they promised to collaborate with the investigations and to testify whenever they were called to do so.

"They signed a pledge. If they don't keep it, we can ask for the preventive custody of the pair. This pledge [of promise] is grounds for preventive custody if they refuse to testify," he affirmed.

The congressman explained that it is up to the courts, called on by the CPI, to ask for the arrest of the pilots in these circumstances. Cunha has taken a position against the CPI going to the United States with the objective of hearing the pilots.

"They're the ones who are being accused. Why do we have to travel?," he asked. ... "I think it is indispensable that they be heard because they were accused", Cunha affirmed. ..."

As Ms. Miranda used to sing, "Bananas Is My Business!"

---ends

Brazil: Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition, Not Even the Keystone Kops

Remember that classic Monty Python sketch, "The Spanish Inquisition?" My favorite part is when one of the befuddled inquisitor-cardinals keeps forgetting what their chief lines of attack are:

"NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Our chief weapon is surprise ... surprise and fear ... fear and surprise...Our two weapons are fear and surprise ...and ruthless efficiency ...
Our THREE weapons are fear, surprise and ruthless efficiency...
And an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope ...
Our four ... no ...
AMONGST our weapons, ... Amongst our weaponry ...Are such elements as fear, surprise ...
I'll come in again."

Well, now lookit the Federal Police in Brazil, who were ridiculed here yesterday for their asinine statements laying the blame for the tragic Sept. 29 mid-air collision solely on the two American pilots of the business jet, whose transponder was not signaling.

The Federal Police 800-page report recommended criminal prosecution of and assigned blame to the pilots, and the pilots only -- even though it is abundantly clear that a series of critical human errors and systems failures on the ground, at air traffic control, set the collision in place between two aircraft flying head-on into each other at 37,000 feet.

The report dutifully makes note of this astonishing chain of events, since the air-traffic control screw-ups leading to this crash are no longer in dispute even in Brazil. But the Federal Police did not investigate air traffic control; in their report, they merely noted what's already known. Oddly enough, the Federal Police see only two culprits: The American pilots.

'Air traffic control error is none of our concern,' the Keystone Kops effectively said. 'It is strictly a matter for the military' (which runs air traffic control).

Or is it? Now the Keystone Kops ... I mean the Federal Police seem to be on the public-relations defensive after taking heat for this indefensible stance. It is, as I said earlier, a crock to contend that the Federal Police cannot investigate and charge military air traffic controllers.

The International Federation of Airlines Pilots Associations reacted to the Federal Police inquiry with utter astonishment in a statement yesterday that called the Federal Police investigation "fundamentally flawed." It said, "the decision by the Policia Federal to exclude the military from their investigation is a staggering oversight."

The worldwide pilots' group says it is "outraged" by the police report. So the Federal Police have now gone into a defensive crouch (till this, too, blows over as the clamor for the pilots' heads continues. Watch the lawyers and representatives for the victims' relatives, desperate to keep blame solely on the Americans, take center stage next).

And get the logic reported in the story below. A police official now says (though not in the report), "The pilots' mission is to fly without collision and that of the controllers is to avoid collision, but both sides failed and, therefore, are to blame in equal proportions."

Hey, Sherlock! Whatever happened to all that "forensic" detail? And when your 'case' is attacked, you respond with that loony non-sequitur?

Furthermore, all of this talk of "blame" contradicts a basic principle of worldwide aviation safety:

It is a fundamental mistake for political or police authorities to rush to criminalize an accident before competent, independent aviation investigators have concluded their inquiries.

What you get a rush to assign criminal blame is precisely what you got in Brazil: The air traffic controllers lawyered-up (and even shrinked-up, after they claimed en masse last year to be suffering from certified psychological trauma and thus unable to testify to military investigators) while the military harrumphed and blew blasts of hot air about the pilots possibly doing criminal aerial maneuvers over the Amazon.

Are the skies of Brazil any safer now than they were on Sept. 29? Of course not. They are arguably less so, now that the controllers have gone to ground, while occasionally engaging in disruptive tactics to show they won't accept any blame.

And none of the problems that were exposed by this awful disaster -- bad radar coverage, dark radio zones, faulty equipment at ATC centers, untrained, poorly paid and badly supervised controllers who even have to take time out from their work day to march around in military drills -- has been addressed.

And Wonderful Waldir Pires -- he of the "illegal aerial maneuvers and stunts" delusion -- is still the Defense Minister.

Anyway, here, with translation from our Sao Paulo bureau chief Richard Pedicini, you can see the Federal police spinning -- "the Defense ministry is dragging its heels!" -- as fed to O Estado today (and dutifully transcribed in a few brief accounts in the U.S. media). Note the usual dodgy lack of attribution for certain ... adjustments ... in the narrative, making it unclear what's in the report and what's being spun in a second-day ploy to tamp down the derision.

O ESTADO DE S.PAULO

Federal Police denies having shielded controllers
According to police, inquiry finds at least three operators had responsibility comparable to pilots
Vannildo Mendes, BRASILIA

The Federal Police inquiry into the collision between the Legacy and the Gol Boeing, in which 154 people died, attributes to the Cindacta-1 (Brasilia) air traffic controllers the same degree of guilt for the accident as is conferred on the American pilots Joe Lepore and Jan Paul Paladino. Of the ten who were on duty in Brasilia on September 29, at least three had a larger share of responsibility and should be accused of crimes, without intent. They can receive from 2 to 5 years of prison, the same penalty foreseen for the pilots, in the event they are convicted. The others may be held responsible to a lesser degree.

But the controllers will have to be tried by the military courts. As it does not have the power to investigate members of the military, the Federal Police can only accuse the Legacy pilots. Policemen who participated in the investigation have thought it strange that up to now the Air Force has not opened a criminal investigation to determine the controllers' degree of responsibility.

Military prosecutor Giovanni Rattacaso, even though he has not been called on either by the Air Force or any other institution, sees elements to indict the operators on duty on the day of the accident for doubly aggravated homicide (failure to observe rules of craft or profession and multiple victims). Rattacaso understands that, although the main cause of the accident was the involuntary turning off of the transponder by the pilots, as shown in the inquiry, the controllers also had the duty to take measures to avoid the collision.

The final report on the accident was delivered Wednesday by inspector Renato Sayão to the federal court in Sinop, in Mato Grosso, where the inquiry was begun.The Federal Police investigation points to a series of errors by the controllers, from the takeoff from the base at São José dos Campos with the United States as destination. The flight authorization included incomplete instructions, inducing the pilots to believe that they could fly at 37,000 feet in the entire route, when they should have descended to 36,000 feet in Brasilia and climbed to 38,000 feet 400 kilometers ahead, as foreseen by the original flight plan.

When the Legacy flew over Brasilia, a controller had the opportunity to verify that the jet was at 37,000 feet, but did not check the correct altitude not did he give clear instructions to descend to 36,000 feet. He had deduced, negligently, that the pilots would descend on their own. Another controller perceived the loss of data on the secondary radar - which gives the plane's precise altitude - but did not advise the pilots.

This controller passed to the colleague who relieved him at shift change the information that the Legacy was flying at 36,000 feet and following the flight plan. The operator who took over the work, for his part, believed the information without checking it and only a half hour later, on seeing that the jet's altitude was incorrect, tried to take measures. But he acted imprudently on trying to make contact with the jet. He did not succeed and attempted no alternative measures. "The pilots' mission is to fly without colliding and that of the controllers is to avoid collision, but both sides failed and, therefore, are to blame in equal proportions", said a policeman.

The International Federation of Airline Pilots (IFALPA) yesterday harshly criticized the inquiry's conclusion that asked for the pilots to be accused. IFALPA called the "exclusion of the military from the investigation" an "unbelievable omission."

"It's vital that an independent technical investigation (...) be completed before any civil or criminal proceedings be pursued", the entity affirmed. "To anticipate the results of a technical investigation with a legal investigation that may not be technically competent is counterproductive for the improvement of aviation safety."

--end

JetBlue's Funny Valentine

I guess the people running JetBlue mean business. It's an eight-year-old company, one of the legendary success stories in aviation, and they threw out the founder today.

Other poorly performing airlines insult and penny-pinch their front-line workers, while bestowing lavish bonuses on their numbskull top executives as service continues to deteriorate. But JetBlue unceremoniously showed the door to founder David Neeleman. The ouster comes as the company struggles to regain customer confidence after a disastrous meltdown starting on Valentine's Day, in which more than 1,200 flights were canceled by bad weather, mostly in New York, and passengers were stranded on parked airplanes for six hours or more.

JetBlue -- which some airline experts think expanded way too aggressively in the last year or so -- hasn't been the same airline ever since.

Ah, nostalgia. The JetBlue Web site still carries Mr. Neeleman's optimistic greetings and "flight log."

Dave Barger, the company's president, was named to take Mr. Neeleman's place as chief executive officer. That's "effective immediately," as a JetBlue statement put it, leaving no room for doubt that Mr. Neeleman was being asked not to let the door hit him in the tail as he left the building.

(Mr. Neeleman henceforth will serve as "non-executive Chairman of the Board," the statement said, describing a position that sounds to me something like "enlisted five-star General.")

Do not, by the way, look upon Mr. Neeleman's new position as "non-executive Chairman" as a token of his colleagues' abiding esteem. Look on it, instead, as an acknowledgment that, with 10.8 million JetBlue shares (6 percent of the outstanding shares) as of Dec. 31, Mr. Neeleman is the top individual stockholder, and number five over all. The other four top shareholders are institutional investors: FMR Corp. (14.8 percent); George Soros et al (9.5 percent); Capital Research & Management (8.7 percent) and Wellington Management (7.7 percent).

It's just bidness, non-executive Chairman Neeleman.

Meltdowns stranding passengers on planes are becoming routine. In about a half-dozen instances since late December, thousands of passengers -- not just on JetBlue but on American, US Airways and others -- were stranded on planes parked on ramps with insufficient food, water and bathroom facilities for up to 10 hours.

American Airlines by far as had the most number of instances, the most recent of which occurred in the Dallas region on April 24.

JetBlue, until Feb. 14 justifiably known for terrific customer service, reacted to the Valentine's Day fiasco by adopting a Customer Bill of Rights that clearly spells out how the airline plans to rectify any future such situations. From what I hear, they mean it, too.

American Airlines, on the other hand, simply plowed ahead with a deeply stupid plan to award its evidently heroic top executives and managers with nearly $200 million in bonuses, while continuing to strand customers. Oh, and royally pissing off their long-suffering pilots and flight attendants.

Meanwhile, air service continues to deteriorate across the board as the peak summer season approaches.

American Airlines, by the way, is far from the worst in terms of delays. In March, according to the U.S. Transportation Department, 78.4 percent of American's domestic flights arrived on time. At the bottom of the list were Northwest (66 percent on time arrivals), JetBlue (63.6 percent) and US Airways (55.5 percent).

If you want detail on delays and other metrics highlighting the deterioration of domestic commercial air service, the Transportation Department's excellent Bureau of Transportation Statistics has plenty. It publishes a comprehensive monthly survey called The Air Travel Consumer Report. (That's a link to the latest one, for March).

But for comprehensive and real-time statistical information on flights, airports and airlines -- including scorecard rankings sliced and diced any way you want them -- I strongly recommend FlightStats.com. You might have to spend an hour or so fiddling around to really get the hang of it, but I guarantee you'll bookmark it once you do. Registration is free.

Incidentally, you'll sometimes read a recommendation to be sure to check another Web site run by the F.A.A. for real-time information with a national map showing "Airport Status and Delays." Trust me: Forget about it! I recommended it years ago, and wouldn't do so now. When the thing is actually working, it's nearly always hopelessly out of date, or simply dead wrong. Do not trust it. Ever.

--end

Travel Notes from the Police Blotter

Above: Sheriff's Department, Reno, Nevada. Or an approximation of it, from the TV comedy "Reno 911."

It's "that" time of the year.

Thinking about travel plans? Time to think about Crime Prevention.

Well, here are two places to avoid if you can -- if the alarming tourist information published in the U.S. State Department's regularly updated Consular Information bulletins is any guide. We'll return to these fascinating bulletins in the future, and I won't just pick on Brazil and Saudi Arabia.

But first things first:

Brazil! (Of course). It's not prime leisure-travel season in the southern hemisphere, but business travel is still a big factor.

From the State Department:

"Crime throughout Brazil has reached very high levels. The Brazilian police and the Brazilian press report that the rate of crime continues to rise, especially in the major urban centers – though it is also spreading in rural areas. Brazil’s murder rate is several times higher than that of the U.S. Rates for other crimes are similarly high. The majority of crimes are not solved. There were several reported rapes against American citizens in 2006.

"Street crime remains a problem for visitors and local residents alike, especially in the evenings and late at night. ... Robbery and “quicknapping” outside of banks and ATM machines are common. In a “quicknapping,” criminals abduct victims for a short time in order to receive a quick payoff from the family, business or the victim’s ATM card. Some victims have been beaten and/or raped.

"The incidence of crime against tourists is greater in areas surrounding beaches, hotels, discotheques, bars, nightclubs, and other similar establishments that cater to visitors. This type of crime is especially prevalent during Carnaval (Brazilian Mardi Gras), but takes place throughout the year. ... Incidents of theft on city buses are frequent and visitors should avoid such transportation. ...

"At airports, hotel lobbies, bus stations and other public places, incidents of pick pocketing, theft of hand-carried luggage, and laptop computers are common. ... If a tourist looks lost or seems to be having trouble communicating, a seemingly innocent bystander offering help may victimize them. Care should be taken at and around banks and internationally connected automatic teller machines that take U.S. credit or debit cards. ... Travelers using personal ATMs or credit cards sometimes receive billing statements with non-authorized charges after returning from a visit to Brazil. ...

"RIO DE JANEIRO: ... Tourists are particularly vulnerable to street thefts and robberies on and in areas adjacent to major tourist attractions and the main beaches in the city. Walking on the beaches is very dangerous at night. During the day, travelers are advised not to take possessions of value to the beach. Incidents affecting tourists in 2006 included the robbery of cars and a tourist bus going into the city from the airport and the murder of a Portuguese tourist at 8:30 a.m. on Copacabana beach. Drug gangs are often responsible for destruction of property and other violence. ... In Rio de Janeiro City, motorists are allowed to treat stoplights as stop signs between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. to protect against holdups at intersections. While most police officials are honest, in 2006, there were several cases of corrupt police officials extorting money from American tourists. ...

"SAO PAULO: ... All areas of Sao Paulo have a high rate of armed robbery of pedestrians at stoplights. There is a particularly high incidence of robberies and pick pocketing in the Praca da Se section of Sao Paulo and in the eastern part of the city. As is true of "red light districts" in other cities, the areas of Sao Paulo on Rua Augusta north of Avenida Paulista and the Estacao de Luz metro area are especially dangerous. There are regular reports of young women slipping knockout drops in men's drinks and robbing them of all their belongings while they are unconscious. Armed holdups of pedestrians and motorists by young men on motorcycles (“motoboys”) are an increasingly common occurrence in some parts of Sao Paulo. Victims who resist risk being shot. The number-one item of choice by robbers in Sao Paulo, especially with regards to business travelers, is laptop computers. ... "

{My note: Well, there is something to be said for being safe and cozy in military and police custody in Brazil, as I was last year for 36 hours. Even then, though, at Federal Police regional headquarters during an all-night interrogation following the Sept. 29 mid-air collision, we Americans were warned to stay off an open air-balcony because of the danger of "random shootings."}

And how about sunny Saudi Arabia? What a fun place, especially for female visitors. (Jews, or those with passports showing they've visited Israel, need not even apply, by the way). And remember, this is where a good portion of the money you spend at the gas station goes.

From the State Department:

"The norms for public behavior in Saudi Arabia are extremely conservative, and religious police, known as Mutawwa, are charged with enforcing these standards. ... To ensure that conservative standards of conduct are observed, the Saudi religious police have accosted or arrested foreigners, including U.S. citizens, for improper dress or other alleged infractions, such as consumption of alcohol or association by a female with a male to whom she is not related. ... The Saudi Embassy in Washington advises women traveling to Saudi Arabia to dress in a conservative fashion, wearing ankle-length dresses with long sleeves, and not to wear trousers in public. In many areas of Saudi Arabia, particularly Riyadh and the central part of the Kingdom, Mutawwa pressure women to wear a full-length black covering known as an Abaya, and to cover their heads. Most women in these areas therefore wear an Abaya and carry a headscarf to avoid being accosted.

"...Some Mutawwa try to enforce the rule that men and women who are beyond childhood years may not mingle in public, unless they are family or close relatives. Mutawwa may ask to see proof that a couple is married or related. Women who are arrested for socializing with a man who is not a relative may be charged with prostitution. Some restaurants, particularly fast-food outlets, have refused to serve women who are not accompanied by a close male relative. In addition, many restaurants no longer have a "family section" in which women are permitted to eat. These restrictions are not always posted, and in some cases women violating this policy have been arrested. This is more common in Riyadh and the more conservative central Nejd region.

In public, dancing, playing music and showing movies are forbidden." And of course, the vigilance toward female behavior isn't restricted to tourists and business travelers. They treat their own females even worse.

--end

Brazil: Off With Their Heads!

Back down the rabbit hole today, the Queen of Hearts ... er, Keystone Kops ... uh, Brazilian Federal Police have delivered their verdict.

No mystery-novel surprise twists here: The American pilots dunnit! By God, we have 800 pages saying so. Furthermore, our wondrous 800-page report frequently employs the magic word "Forensic!" -- whatever the hell that means.

The following, translated by our Sao Paulo bureau chief, Richard Pedicini, is from Diario de Cuiaba, the newspaper published in the capital city of the state of Mato Grosso, where the collision took place.

(First, please do note the tricky language the wily authorities employ:

(The pilots "erred in not verifying" that the transponder was not signaling for 55 minutes before the crash. It is not a pilot's job to monitor the transponder, which gives no discernible alert when it flips off-line (which they often do). It is, however, the job of air traffic control -- which in this case was aware of the Legacy's non-signaling transponder for those 55 minutes and inexplicably failed to try to reach the pilots and tell them -- to be aware and to act.

(The transponder "was involuntarily turned off during the flight," which suggests that that pilots did it, and doesn't suggest (as ExcelAire says evidence does) that the damned thing might have been malfunctioning. And besides, everyone knows a transponder that wasn't signaling was not the primary cause of the accident, but rather that the transponder was the last potential fail-safe that possibly might have prevented it, once the two planes were placed on a collision course through a series of disastrous and utterly inexcusable errors on the ground.

(The "non fulfillment of the flight plan" ... Absurd and deliberately misleading. No pilot I have spoken with over the last 7 months, and I have spoken with dozens, says that a formal flight plan takes precedence over direct orders from air traffic control, unless the pilot has reason to believe the flight controller has lost his marbles, a la General Jack D. Ripper in "Dr. Strangelove." The pilots had absolutely no reason to believe the flight-control orders they were flying under -- to maintain 37,000 feet -- were "incorrect or improper," as the Queen of Hearts ... I mean, the Chief of Police, asserts.)

It's important to keep in mind that there are other investigations going on -- in Brazil's Congress, and in the Defense ministry, which is in charge of air traffic control and of course has not only the motive but the means and the opportunity keep the blame focused on the American pilots.

But also, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and other independent and respected voices in world aviation have conducted their own detailed investigations that show, as you've been reading here all along, that the collision was caused by a series of catastrophic mistakes and breakdowns in Brazil's notoriously unsafe air-traffic control system.

I can't believe those agencies -- which are required by international aviation protocol to defer to investigative authorities in the nation where a crash takes place -- will continue indefinitely to sit back silently and allow the two American pilots to be railroaded, while the shockingly poor state of Brazil's air traffic control system -- which was called "unsafe and dangerous" in November by the International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers Associations -- goes unaddressed.

Actually, some people in Brazil think the Federal Police's bumptious report is basically a ploy to quickly assign some official blame to the pilots and let it hang out there for as long as possible. It's not clear when the Federal Police might bring formal charges to top off their previous absurd charge, cobbled together in a rush in December on the day a federal court ordered the pilots released after 71 days, of "failing to ensure" the safety of Brazil's skies.

The Federal Police motivation, some believe, is to energize the slippery Brazilian media with renewed anti-American fervor, for political gain. There might also be a motive to provide a more solid platform to the lawyers representing huge lawsuit claims by the families of the Brazilian airliner victims, who are suing the Americans, of course, and whose representatives have said flatly that they will accept no verdict but that the Americans were criminally at fault.

Hey, one robs banks because that's where the money is, as Willy Sutton said. You ain't going to get much going after the Brazilian Defense Department.

So scapegoating the pilots for as long as possible conceivably serves a purpose till the actual true story is on the record, at some point down the road, by which time nobody in Brazil will believe anything anymore.

Well, you know the drill by now if you've been closely following this Bumble in the Jungle since early October. So please read on):

Flight 1907

End of the investigations

After 7 months, Federal Police delivers to Federal Court in Sinop 800 page inquiry on country's worst air disaster

JJ CAJÚ

In the report, Sayão accused only Paladino and Lepore, but recommended an investigation of air traffic control by the Air Force.

RODRIGO VARGAS
Of the news team

The Federal Police concluded the investigations into the accident involving the Gol Boeing 737-800 and the Legacy 600 business jet, which happened on September 29, 2006. The final report, with more than 800 pages, was delivered yesterday to the Federal Court in Sinop (500 kilometers from Cuiabá).

As already advanced by inspector Renato Sayão, who headed the inquiry, only the Legacy pilots, the North Americans Joseph Lepore and Jan Paul Palladino, were pointed to as responsible for the largest tragedy in the history of Brazilian aviation, in which 154 people died.

According to an official note released by the Federal Police, Lepore and Paladino erred in not verifying the functioning of the aircraft's anti-collision system, the transponder and TCAS. The forensic exams showed that the system was involuntarily turned off during the flight.

"[The devices] were sent to the USA for tests in the factories and did not present defects (...) Besides this, after the collision, the transponder was turned on without problems and the emergency code activated", a stretch of the note points out.

Another failure related to the pilots' work is in respect of the non-fulfillment of the flight plan, which established three different altitudes between the airports of São José dos Campos (São Paulo) and Manaus (Amazonas). The Legacy, however, maintained the height of 37,000 feet until the collision with the Boeing.

"The rule says that always when the pilot receives an altitude or direction that he considers incorrect or improper for the aircraft's safety it is the pilots' duty to confirm and solicit additional information from Air Space Control."

The forensic reports indicate that the flight controllers in São José passed the pilots a provisional altitude, which should have been altered while passing over Brasilia (Federal District). "There was not a clear modification of the flight plan by Air Space Control."

According to the report, the Legacy's trajectory was monitored in the mode "Radar Vigilance" ("Vigilância Radar"), in which the pilots have autonomy to make the altitude changes. "This is different from the service of "Radar Vectorization" (" Vetoração Radar") in which the change of altitude is the responsibility of Air Traffic Control".

The investigation proved that Lepore and Palladino had difficulty in communicating with air traffic control in Brasilia during about an hour. But, in this case too, the pilots did not follow the safest procedure.

"The pilots should have activated the code for communication failure 7600. If this procedure had been taken, the pilots would have perceived that the transponder was off", said the Federal Police, which recognized as "fundamental" the forensic reports produced by the National Criminalistic Institute. (INC).

CONTROLLERS – On the eventual participation of the air traffic controllers in the episode, the report points out that failures had been detected and "noncompliance with the applicable rules of Air Space Control".

By telephone, the inspector explained that the decision to investigate this hypothesis was up to the Air Force or the Military Prosecutors' Office. "This will take place starting when they learn what we have found. In this case, there will be a need for a new investigation, from the moment of takeoff."

--ends

Brazil: We Know How It Happened ... But Pilots Will Face Charges Anyway

The Federal Police in Brazil, having quickly finished what strikes me as a very dodgy investigation, are rushing to file criminal charges against the two American pilots as soon as they can.

The police will apparently claim that pilot negligence caused the crash, in that the Legacy's transponder (which is connected to the TCAS, the anti-collision alert) was not working for 55 minutes before the collision with a Gol 737 that sent all 154 aboard the 737 to their deaths on Sept. 29.

The police evidently will also trot out the long-discredited charge that the American pilots were also at fault because they failed to follow the filed flight plan (which -- and this is no longer in any dispute -- was superseded, as flight plans routinely are, by explicit instructions by air-traffic control to maintain 37,000 feet altitude).

We know that the transponder was not signaling. But why the transponder was not working is very much an open question -- unless one believes (as no one with the common sense of a turnip does) that the pilots deliberately turned it off.

Was the transponder mechanically defective -- with perhaps a bad connection that could have accounted for its suddenly coming back on line with the jolt of the impact? ExcelAire says it learned only after the crash that the transponder equipment in the Legacy had previously been repaired before being installed in the new plane. (Neither the plane's manufacturer, Embraer, nor the maker of the transponder equipment, Honeywell, has commented on that).

Or did one of the pilots somehow inadvertently jostle the transponder housing, perhaps with a foot, and knock it off line without realizing it? That's considered unlikely, but the possibility has not been entirely ruled out. (Meanwhile, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said last week that aircraft transponders don't adequately alert pilots when they go off line, as transponders sometimes do).

So as to the transponder, there are unknowns.

It is, however, also well known that the transponder -- which controls the anti-collision alert -- was only the final fail-safe measure that could possibly have at the last-minute averted a collision at 37,000 feet that had already been firmly set in place by air traffic control and its faulty systems on the ground.

But the Federal Police wish to hear nothing more than that the American pilots are at fault. They have already said that if air-traffic control itself contributed to the crash -- and as is now well known, a breakdown in air-traffic control systems and human operations was the actual cause-- that is not the concern of the Federal Police.

Ridiculously, the Federal Police chief says that, since the Brazilian military runs air traffic control, and the controllers are military personnel, investigations into culpability by air-traffic control are the responsibility solely of the Defense Department and its estimable minister, Wonderful Waldir Pires.

Along with the police, the Defense Department has also been blaming the American pilots from day one and admitting no fault. And of course the Defense Department has an obvious interest in maintaining turf, in holding onto that honeypot of an annual budget for air-traffic control, and of course in saving face politically in Brazil.

Yet while the fix is in, the truth is emerging forcefully -- even as the American pilots are about to be railroaded again in Brazil, where nobody is ever at fault except outsiders.

In a lengthy magazine report, the International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers Associations (IFATCA) recently documented how the accident happened.

In essence, the IFATCA magazine, and an earlier report on the accident issued by IFATCA in November, don't differ in detail from the report that ExcelAire filed (here's another link to that) with the Federal Police last month. The IFATCA report was scathing in its indictment of Brazilian air-traffic control technology as "unsafe and dangerous."

The article in the March issue of "Controller," published by IFATCA, said of the Brazil disaster:

"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."

Readers who have closely followed the reporting on this blog since early October about this tragedy will find few surprises in the 18-page magazine report by IFATCA, which represents air traffic controllers all over the world and had representatives on the scene in Brazil within a day of the crash.

But what you will find is a detailed and sobering account from a source totally independent of ExcelAire, the Long Island company that operated the business jet and employed the two accused pilots. ExcelAire has already sent its own detailed account of the accident to Federal Police report. (See my post of May 4 for that link).

The ExcelAire report and the IFATCA report do not differ in any significant factual way.

Some highlights of the report by IFATCA, which is based in Germany:

--"How come, on a beautiful sunny day,... two brand-new aircraft equipped with the latest technology and under surveillance of a relatively modern ATC system (or so we were told) collide in 2006 like they would have in the 1950s?

--[The Legacy (tail number N600XL) was under ATC orders to maintain 37,000 feet from San Jose all the way to its destination in Manaus, as the pilots and others looking into this accident have always said.] "There is no record of a request from N600XL to the control agencies to conduct a change of altitude ... there is also no record of any instruction from Brasilia Center to the aircraft directing a change of altitude."

-- [At air traffic control in Brasilia, as the crash scenario was well in place with both aircraft coming at each other in the middle of the same airway at 37,00 feet], "there was a difference of 1,000 feet between the level shown by the ATC system [36,000 feet for the Legacy] and the aircraft's actual and cleared flight level" [37,000 feet]

-- [In October, Brazilian authorities reacted with violent denunciations when I reported that there are notorious radar blind zones and "black holes" in ground-air radio communication in Brazil's air space, especially over the Amazon.] "IFATCA's team's observation indicated that ... the losses of two-way communication and the bad intermittent radar returns are 'normal and frequent occurrences,'" the IFATCA report says.

-- [Despite that, the Brazilian media, reflecting reckless statements by the Defense Minister Waldir Pires and others], "reported almost immediately after the September collision .. that the Legacy pilots may have voluntarily turned off their transponder to perform some 'maneuvers or stunts' to test their new aircraft. This suggestion of reckless flying put the 'blame' of the collision squarely on the pilots."

-- [The coalition of scapegoating between the Brazilian authorities and the Brazilian news media] reflects "another episode of 'trial by public opinion'..."

--At times after the accident, as controllers job actions protesting various inquiries severely disrupted Brazilian air travel, public opinion began shifting and some elements of the Brazilian media did begin reporting on "what was wrong with the Brazilian ATC system: mis-management, old equipment lacking sufficient redundancy, poorly trained controllers, many near-misses unreported or not investigated, insufficient staffing levels, low salaries and complete lack of planning."

-- "What the tragic collision between Gol Flight 1907 and N600XL has again clearly demonstrated is that, for a mid-air to occur, a chain of events is required where long-standing problems may come to light. They must align in such an unlucky way that, at the end, all layers of the ATC system are crossed."

--"Of course, the fact that a transponder ceases to function or is disabled in flight (being either voluntarily or involuntarily), is not yet sufficient to explain a mid-air collision in itself. It is just a contributing factor, and may be the start of a chain of events. There must be failures or underlying problems occurring simultaneously before this can actually become so critical that the worse must be feared ... a mid-air collision."

--[After the crash and onward], "the Brazilian media [reacted] with sensationalism and drama-for-effect .. looking for and finding someone to blame for the accident" rather than trying to investigate the complex causes.

-- [In Brazil, which was a military dictatorship under 25 years ago], "the press is still very much controlled by the Military and ... rather scared to make open attacks without having firm evidence." [My note: "Firm evidence" in Brazil is primarily defined as official accusation, not independent reporting or inquiry]

So that's where we are today. Rushing to get the media firmly focused on the American pilots as not-in-dispute evidence of what actually caused the crash piles up, the federal Chief of Police now ready to file his charges.

***

From Brazzil Magazine (an English-language daily online at Brazzil.com):

"Brazil's Federal Police has finished its investigation on the causes of the worst Brazilian air accident ever, which killed 154 people ...

Roberto Sayão, the police chief in charge of the case is writing his final report, but his conclusion is already known. Sayão has determined that the two American pilots should be blamed for the tragedy. ...

According to the federal police inquiry, the American pilots not only disrepected the flight plan putting their small jet in a collision course with the Boeing, but also were negligent for only turning on the transponder - the anti-collision equipment - minutes after the collision between the two planes.

Weren't the Brazilian air controllers also negligent? This is not for me to say, responds Sayão. They are military men and he cannot probe their actions as he was told in no uncertain terms by the military brass. This is the job of the Air Force, he argues.

[My note: That's a crock. The military's prosecutor general has already said publicly that the Federal Police, if they had the grounds, could file charges against the air traffic controllers].

***
From the A.P. today:

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) -- Federal investigators have concluded that two American pilots of an executive jet were responsible for a collision with an airliner that killed 154 people, Brazilian news media reported Wednesday. ...

The Web site for O Globo, one of Brazil's largest newspapers, reported that federal police found the pilots failed to notice the plane's transponder wasn't working until after the crash. ... Tamares Carvalho, spokeswoman for federal police investigator Renato Sayao, confirmed that the criminal investigation into the accident had been concluded and sent to the Justice Ministry. ...

A lawyer for the pilots denied they were to blame. "From the press reports, it would appear that the police have prematurely accused the pilots in response to public pressure and have not conducted a complete and thorough investigation of the facts," attorney Joel R. Weiss wrote in an e-mail. "The pilots are not at fault. We have not yet seen the report and will comment further after having an opportunity to review it," he said. ..."

And from today's O Estado de S. Paulo, Brazil's largest newspaper. (Translation by our Sao Paulo bureau chief, Richard Pedicini):

ESTADO DE S.PAULO
Federal Police accuse pilots in inquiry
Inspector ends inquiry and asks military to punish controllers
Catarine Piccioni, CUIABÁ

Seven months after the accident with the Gol Boeing, the Federal Police in Mato Grosso concluded the inquiry into the case maintaining the accusation against the Legacy pilots, the Americans Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino, and suggesting that the competent instances investigate and punish the air traffic controllers. The Federal Police cannot accuse them because they are in the military, which places them under the jurisdiction of the Military Prosecutors' Office and the Military Courts.

Forensic reports produced by the National Criminalistic Institute (INC) confirm that there were lapses by the pilots and the air traffic controllers who were working in the Brasilia air traffic control center, Cindacta-1, on the day of the accident. The collision between the Gol plane and the Legacy, which happened on September 20 of last year, caused the deaths of 154 people on board the Boeing which fell in the Amazon Forest, in Mato Grosso.

The police inspector responsible for the investigations, Renato Sayão, had asked for another 30 days to finish the inquiry, however, the forensic reports from the INC arrived before the extension. The inquiry's final report should be delivered this week to the federal court. After this, the federal prosecutors' office (MPF) should decide if it will or will not hand up an indictment (formal accusation) of the pilots, accused of "exposing an embarkation or aircraft to danger", without intent. The MPF can also ask for additional investigations. The pair is in the USA.

For the pilots' lawyer, the criminal lawyer Theo Dias, the Federal Police inquiry is inconclusive. "I've never seen an inquiry concluded so rapidly", he said ironically. "The police are succumbing to popular demand, without investigating the facts. To have an idea, they have not called anyone from Embraer [the Legacy's maker] to testify, much less investigated possible failures in the aircraft's equipment."

Dias reaffirmed that Lepore and Paladino have wide experience in planes similar to the Legacy. "The accident would not have happened without the controllers' errors". O Estado anticipated in December that the inquiry would point to imprudence and negligence on the pilots' part, based on the black-box dialogs. They perceived that the transponder (the equipment that communicates with the radars) was off only after the accident.

--ends

Support Our Troop

Those of you who have been e-mailing around this unpatriotic photo of Vice President Dick ("Deferrals") Cheney sitting next to some scowling old lady in a Dr. Seuss hat, who herself is sitting in front of a person who appears to be Carmen Miranda's kid sister -- STOP IT IMMEDIATELY!!!

Show some respect! That's because Mr. Cheney, the warrior who opted out of service in Vietnam by obtaining five draft deferrals because he had "other priorities," is now In Country. 'Ten HUT!

That's right, Mr. Cheney has made a surprise visit to Baghdad, marking the second time since the recent let's-go-shopping visit of Senator John ("Bombsaway") McCain that an American in Baghdad has had adequate security.

I think the Vice President qualifies for a campaign medal for finally having been in a war zone, if even for just a day. Just don't issue him a weapon. If they do, remember: Duck! (I mean the imperative, not the delicious critter).

Meanwhile, another warrior who conspicuously failed to serve in the military, Rudy Giuliani, is carved a new one in this story in Slate, which is accompanied by a slide show depicting Mr. Giuliani in various poses in drag. These, alas, are not doctored photos.

***

The Morning News

Who dresses these people? Hey, ladies, the auditions for "Pagliacci" are in the East Wing.



******************

Now What ...

Sweet sufferin' Jayzus, just when you think mass stupidity has to have hit rock bottom, this -- perpetrated by this guy ...

On the theory that the best we can to is to try to prevent utter nitwits from hurting themselves or others, such as children, today's advice to this crowd is: At the concession stand, stick with the Diet Coke. Please don't drink the Kool Aid.

In the "What would Jesus do?" department, note the fact that this character travels to his mass gatherings by private jet.

In other nitwit news, we do have Paris Hilton denouncing her 45-day jail sentence as "cruel and unwanted," but then again, she can't hurt anybody. ... Can she?

Wait a minute ... Did I just actually type the words "Paris" and "Hilton" consecutively? Quick! Pass me the Kool Aid!

***

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE WE GO AGAIN

-- Illustration from Wikipedia entry on the Queen of Hearts in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."

We're back on familiar ground down the rabbit hole in Brazil. In Brazil, the official reaction to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board report this week (here's another link to it), which cited the Sept. 29 crash as reason to better design transponders so pilots are warned when they malfunction, is: "This is evidence that seems to defend the American pilots! Off with their heads!"

The Queen of Hearts at least was indiscriminate in shrieking out verdicts and sentencings without evidence. The Chief of Police, even as mounds of incontrovertible evidence accumulate to show that the crash followed a series of major technical and operational failures in Brazil's air-traffic control system, remains adamantly focused only on the American pilots. Brazil's federal Chief of Police evidently still adheres to the inane notion -- first advanced by the Defense Minister, Wonderful Waldir Pires -- that for some reason, the American pilots deliberately turned off the transponder to avoid detection over the Amazon.

Besides simple anti-Americanism, the main reason for this nonsense, I believe, is political fear among authorities in Brazil of what the air-traffic controllers will do next, if real blame shifts their way. They've already thrown repeated tantrums and essentially shut down air travel in Brazil for days at a time since the Sept. 29 crash, as the investigations geared up.

Egads, the horror. If the controllers had any fault, the Chief of Police declares, it is of course a matter for the military (which operates Brazil's infamous air traffic control system and has an obvious interest in protecting turf and in covering ass), and not a matter for the police.

Even though both airplanes were civilian and the 154 people who died were civilians, as are the two American pilots.

And remember, on the very day in December when a federal judge finally ordered the pilots released after 71 days in detention in Brazil, the Keystone Kops, in a desperate attempt to keep the pilots in custody, hastily cobbled together a formal criminal accusation that the pilots had "failed to ensure" the safety of Brazil's skies.

The Federal Police are still seething that the court let the pilots out of Brazil.

Those who are following this story carefully might want to consult the ExcelAire report that I linked to earlier -- here's another link to it -- specifically the section regarding questions about the transponder equipment and its history. In that 22,000-word report, filed in Portuguese on April 9 with the Federal Police, ExcelAire says it didn't learn till after the crash that some key cockpit equipment was used, not new, and had in fact been repaired before being installed in the Legacy.

Neither Embraer, the plane's manufacturer, nor Honeywell, which made the transponder equipment, has commented on that. Honeywell did comment (last item, below) on the recent N.T.S.B. report, saying its transponders meet current standards in how they alert pilots to a malfunction. No one disputes that point.

It's been known since day one, by the way, that the transponder on the Legacy apparently was not transmitting a signal, removing the last potential barrier to a mid-air collision that was already long set in motion by failures on the ground that kept the two aircraft coming at each other at 37,000 feet.

The new N.T.S.B. report that has the Brazilian authorities so riled up merely says that cockpit voice-recording data show that the American pilots were not aware the transponder was malfunctioning till after the impact -- which has been known for some time. The report suggests to the F.A.A. that transponders ought to be designed to give pilots sufficient warning when they are not functioning.

And as I have reported here repeatedly, Brazilian air-traffic control was aware that the Legacy's transponder wasn't signaling at all for about 55 minutes before the crash -- and inexplicably did nothing about it.

Meanwhile, the Chief of Police talks about "forensic" evidence as if he's running C.S.I. Amazon.

Hang on one minute, Sherlock! After the emergency landing at the Cachimbo air base following the crash, the damaged Legacy sat there in the open, where it remains today, though stripped of avionics parts.

We seven Americans were held at the base for 24 hours (before another all-night session at a Federal Police regional headquarters a few hundred miles south in Cuiaba -- and, for the pilots, two additional months of being detained in Brazil.)

During my time detained at that godforsaken Amazon airfield, I was amazed to watch how many dozens of people -- Air Force, Federal Police, unidentified outsiders -- were allowed to crawl all over the plane and its cockpit, doing tests, pulling out parts and whatever. If that airplane was in fact a crime scene, as the Brazilian police logic argued from day one, it was the worst-secured crime scene I've ever witnessed. The morning after the crash, I even was able to go back inside the plane by myself to fetch my laptop. The cockpit was unsecured.

Anyway, here's some reaction in the Brazil media. Translation via our indomitable Sao Paulo bureau chief, Richard Pedicini:

O Globo
Police chief: "This is material for the pilots' defense"
Police forensic reports deny technical failure; only the two Americans will be accused

by Anselmo Carvalho Pinto (Special to O Globo)

CUIABÁ – Federal Police chief Renato Sayão said yesterday that the information collected in the inquiry into the accident between the Gol Boeing and the Legacy leave no doubt that the business jet's anticollision equipment emitted a warning signal when disconnected. The chief criticized the evaluation of the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), according to which the anticollision equipment was not fully functional.

"Besides, this is information for the pilots' defense. This type of release is only in their interest", he said, referring to Joseph Lepore and Jan Paladino, already accused in the Federal Police inquiry.

The chief, who is conducting the investigation to find the causes of the accident, in which 154 people died, said that the forensic reports about the TCAS [anti-collision alert] and the transponder did not detect any problem in their operation.

Sayão expects to finish the inquiry report in the second half of this month, after more than seven months of investigation and four requests for extensions to the inquiry.

"I have the report 90% concluded", he affirmed.

The inquiry will not incriminate any other person besides the American pilots, accused of exposing an embarkation or aircraft to risk, without intent. The chief has already decided to send the inquiry to the Military Prosecutors' Office, recommending a military audit with the purpose of investigating the suspicion that crimes were committed by the flight controllers at work in Brasilia on the day of the accident. Sayão understood that any failure found in the air traffic control tower should be the target of a military and not a civilian investigation. Embraer informed that it will not comment about the case.

O Globo
"It's not new"
Pilots' lawyers maintains defense
Marília Martins
Correspondent
NEW YORK – The information that there were failures in the Legacy's anticollision system does not change the line of legal defense of the American pilots Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino, says their lawyer, Theo Dias. According to him, since the inquiry began, the possibility of equipment failure has been raised.

"This conclusion brings nothing new to the inquiry. We recently presented a report to the Brazilian Federal Police showing that here was a strong possibility of equipment failure. In all the hypotheses of equipment failure, the responsibility for accidents falls on the air traffic control system", Dias said. "If the Brazilian controllers had acted in accordance with international flight safely rules, the accident would not have happened."

Folha de São Paulo
Civil Aviation compares controller to Bin Laden
Milton Zuanazzi, president of the agency, affirmed that the March paralyzation was beneficial to know the "enemy"
According to the Brazilian Federation of Associations of Air Traffic Controllers, Zuanazzi's declaration does not affect the sector's image
ROGÉRIO PAGNAN
LOCAL REPORTING

The president of Anac (National Civil Aviation Agency), Milton Zuanazzi, compared the Brazilian air traffic controller to the terrorist Osama Bin Laden in listing the country's air transport problems.

He made the comparison because he does not agree with the utilization of the term "aerial blackout" in reference to the Brazilian air transport crisis, while speaking at at civil aviation event in São Paulo.

"I don't thing that direction is lacking, what's lacking is investments - they're not enough. What we had was a movement making demands. The March 30 episode may be a good thing for having happened, in the sense that Bin Laden appeared. The USA is in a fight against an enemy whose that they don't know where he is. Bin Laden appeared."

On the 30th, the controllers stopped work for five hours and 20 minutes, paralyzing Brazilian air space and provoking chaos in all the airports.

After the event, Zuanazzi told journalists that his intention was not to call the controllers terrorists, but rather to cite the country's problems that need solutions. "When you are in a fight, it's important to know who the adversary is, his instruments and how he acts. Not terror, rather quite the contrary. I have deep respect for their movement."

Brigadier Ramón Borges Cardoso, chief of Decea (Department of Air Space Control), also present at the event, defended the controllers and said that it is not possible to point to a single item as responsible for the air crisis. "There isn's a Bin Laden. There's Al Qaeda, there are several factors. You can't blame the controllers for something done by a portion of them."

The president of Anac and the brigadier agreed, however, that the sector's infrastructure in São Paulo is precarious. Zuanazzi mentioned the lack of investment in new runways. Cardoso for his part mention the importance of planning to meet an estimated 17% yearly growth.

Other side
The president of the Brazilian Federation of Associations of Air Traffic Controllers , Carlos Trifilio, 38, said that Zuanazzi was "very unhappy" in the comparison with Bin Laden. According to him, Zuanazzi has power in the government to resolve the real problems of the crisis. "What needs to be done is discover the true enemy, the system itself". Trifilio also said that Zuanazzi's declarations will not have much effect because it doesn't express himself well and doesn't manage to influence public opinion.

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Folha de São Paulo

O ESTADO DE S.PAULO
Federal Police disconsider report for investigation
Juliano Machado

Police chief Renato Sayão, who is presiding over the Federal Police inquiry into the accident, refused to comment on the report by the American agency. "This has nothing to do with the investigation. If someone presents me with something concrete in this document, then I can analyze it." According to Sayão, 95% of the inquiry is finished. "By the end of the month our work will be completed." He emphasized that it is unlikely that he will change his line of investigation that the Legacy pilots, Joe Lepore and Jan Paul Paladino, were negligent in conducting the jet. The pair's lawyer, Theo Dias, affirmed that the agency's report "reinforced the thesis that the responsibility to act in the event of a failure of the transponder or of the anticollision system is the air traffic controllers'."

For the director of Flight Safety of the National Syndicate of Aeronauts, Carlos Camacho, the report shows that the Legacy pilots were "much more victims than causers of the equipment failures".



Manufacturer says controller meets standards
Denyse Godoy
In New York
The American firm Honeywell – manufacturer of the anticollision system installed the ExcelAire Legacy jet that collided with the Gol Boeing in September of 2006 – said yesterday that "the philosophy of warning and announcement employed in the the equipment is consistent with the standards and requirements of the industry and of government authorities."

The declaration was a response to the report released yesterday by the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board), responsible for air safety in the USA. In the document, the entity affirms that the plane's anticollision system has the grave failure of not correctly warning the pilot when, for whatever reason, it stops functioning. In this case, only a visual message is emitted in the cabin, but the ideal, according tot he report, is that the letters be more attention-getting and that some action be required of the pilot.

"The NTSB is only making recommendations for future improvements. It cannot change existing standards", said Honeywell's press secretary. The company said that all of its devices in the Legacy, "including the communications unit, the transponders and the radio", are certified by American, European, and Brazilian aviation agencies.

The NTSB will recommend to the FAA (an American agency) that it inform aviation professionals about the defect, taking into consideration the Brazilian tragedy, which the transponder could have avoided. Honeywell said that the device was functioning correctly on the day of the accident, in which 154 people died.

Embraer, manufacturer of the Legacy, did not wish to manifest itself.

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