Mother sues pilots, Honeywell for Brazil air crash
Source: Reuters
(Adds comment by family member) By Terry Wade SAO PAULO, Brazil, Nov 9 (Reuters) - A woman whose son and husband died in a collision between a Brazilian airliner and a corporate jet has filed a lawsuit in U.S. court against the smaller plane's owner, its pilots and Honeywell International Inc., a lawyer said on Thursday. It was the second lawsuit filed in the United States since one of Brazil's worst air disaster killed 154 people in September and the first case that names pilots Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino, both U.S. citizens, as defendants. "We filed suit against them as individuals," Mike Eidson, a partner at Florida law firm Colson Hicks Eidson told Reuters by telephone. The suit was filed on Tuesday on behalf of Suellen de Abreu Lleras, who lost her son, Daniel, and her husband, Mario Andre, in the crash. Eidson's firm said it expects to add more than 20 families of victims to the case. Alessandro Freire Naranjo, whose wife and daughter died in the crash, said he hoped the firm would help him. "Nothing will bring them back, but someone is responsible and needs to pay for it," Naranjo told reporters in Sao Paulo. The Sept. 29 crash occurred when a Boeing 737-800 jet operated by low-cost Brazilian airline Gol <GOLL4.SA><GOL.N> clipped a Legacy corporate jet made by Brazil's Embraer and operated by ExcelAire Service Inc., a charter company based in Ronkonkoma, New York. Investigators believe the Boeing jet plunged into the Amazon rainforest, killing everyone on board. The Legacy managed to make an emergency landing after losing a winglet. WRONG ALTITUDE? On Monday, San Francisco law firm Leiff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein filed a similar case in the same federal court in Brooklyn, New York. That case represents between 15 and 20 families, a firm employee said. Families of victims have said the ExcelAire pilots were flying at the wrong altitude when the crash occurred or failed to initiate procedures once they noticed they had lost communication with the tower. Families also have said the Honeywell <HON.N> transponder on the small jet may have malfunctioned. A transponder tracks a plane's position relative to the ground and other aircraft as part of anti-collision systems. But many experts have said overworked air traffic controllers or a radar system with gaps could have contributed to the crash. The Folha de S.Paulo newspaper has published what it said were transcripts of air traffic controllers telling pilots to fly all the way to the Amazon city of Manaus at 37,000 feet (11,280 metres) -- an altitude normally used for planes heading the opposite way. Honeywell, based in Morris Township, New Jersey, said this week it was "not aware of any evidence that indicates that its transponder on the Embraer Legacy was not functioning as designed or that Honeywell was responsible for the accident." ExcelAire's lawyer has said the company's pilots, who were being detained in Brazil, were acting on instructions from air traffic control. He said they would be exonerated.
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