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The Association of Relatives and Friends of Gol's Flight 1907 Victims Hire Roberto Peterka
Roberto Peterka Analyzed the Official Reports and the Information of the Jet's Black Box
| Source: Association of Relatives and Friends of Gol's Flight 1907 Victims
CURITIBA, BRAZIL--(Marketwire - March 4, 2009) - The Association of Relatives and Friends
of Gol's Flight 1907 Victims have hired Roberto Peterka, an expert in
aviation accidents, who analyzed the official reports and the information
of the jet's black box. The evidence raised by the Peterka, after four
months of analysis of the information retrieved from the black box of the
Legacy jet, show that the plane's TCAS (Traffic and Collision Avoidance
System) remained deactivated from take-off until shortly after the crash.
Peterka remembers that a piece of information contained in one of the
criminal court records, where the pilots are the defendants, show that when
the Commander of the air traffic control center Cindacta IV, contacted them
via telephone in the Cachimbo airport, where they were able to land the
jet, Mr. Lepore said three times that the TCAS was turned off and, right
after, stated that it was connected (pages 906 of the records - Volume IV
and 59 and 75 of the expert report). He only stated that the equipment was
connected after someone by his side made a remark in English.
The information regarding the fact that the TCAS was turned off is also
present in the jet's black box, where at 19:59:13, Jan Paladino, the
co-pilot asks: "Dude, do you have the TCAS turned on?" and at 19:59:15 the
pilot replies: "Yes, the TCAS is off."
After this dialog, the co-pilot, who had taken control and was manipulating
the plane's controls, expressed twice (19:59:25 and 19:59:31) his concern
with additional possible traffic as the automatic TCAS warnings were not
available at that moment. 11 seconds later, at 19:59:42 the MFD of the
co-pilot started showing the co-pilot's TCAS screen. 8 seconds later, at
19:59:50, the secondary radar screen of the ACC-AZ (Control Center)
established contact with the Legacy's plane transponder. In the records
analysis in page 910 it is highlighted that "...the information retrieved
and discussed in chapter V.3.1 show that the pilot's MFD did not show at
any time during flight the TCAS screen, whereas the
co-pilot's MFD started showing the screen at 19:59:42, after the collision
and it remained doing so until the time of landing. This way, up until the
collision only the PFD and RMU screens showed the functioning state of
TCAS," in other words, the status of the TCAS was "TCAS Off."
In closing the analysis about the activation of TCAS, Roberto Peterka
analyzed the files "selec.csv," "todos1.csv" and "todos2.csv" of the
digital attachment cited by the expert of the National Institute of
Criminology, on page 878 of the records, in addition to the jet's FDR
(Flight Data Record) files.
"With all this, after all data analysis of the equipment and cross checks,
we emphasize that there is no indication that TCAS was tested before the
plane went into the runway, as the pilots declare before the Investigation
Commission and that the TA/RA mode was selected. Besides, there is no
indication that the same was activated," says the expert, Robert Peterka.
He also highlights that all the aviation equipment of the Legacy had passed
exhaustive testing and research in Cachimbo and in the test data of the
manufacturers, and that nothing was confirmed regarding failures or
malfunctioning of TCAS, as pointed out in the Aviation Authority report,
produced by Cenipa.
A familiar member of the association, Rosane Guthjar, believes that the
official reports will be included in the Brazilian criminal court in the
next months.
The Association of Relatives and Friends of Gol's Flight 1907 Victims hope
that the evidence analyzed by Peterka will be allowed in court proceedings.