Associated Press, "U.S. company blames faulty Brazilian air traffic control for fatal Gol Airlines crash"

ExcelAire said faulty Brazilian air traffic control was to blame for a middair collision between one of the U.S. company's executive jets and a commercial airliner that killed 154 people in Brazil's deadliest air disaster. The Gol airlines Boeing 737 and an ExcelAire Legacy 600 jet clipped each other Sept. 29 over the Amazon jungle. The Gol airlines jet crashed, killing all aboard, and the Legacy jet landed safely.

In a 154-page report to Brazilian federal police this month -- released Saturday to the Associated Press -- ExcelAire said an analysis of air traffic control transmissions and the black boxes in the Legacy "confirmed that both planes were freed by Air Traffic Control to fly at the same altitude and the same path, in opposite directions." Brazilian officials were not immediately available to comment on the report.

Brazilian investigators say the controllers bear some responsibility for the crash but Defense Minister Waldir Pires recently defended Brazil's air traffic control system as one of the safest in the world. Pires suggested the collision was the fault of the ExcelAire jet's American pilots because the Legacy's transponder, which operates the aircraft's anti-collision system, was not turned on or malfunctioned. Family members of those killed in the crash have filed lawsuits in federal court in Miami seeking millions of dollars (euros) in damages. They claim the Legacy pilots did not maintain proper altitude or properly communicate with Brazilian air traffic controllers.