The Association of Relatives and Friends of Gol's Flight 1907 Victims Hire Roberto Peterka

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.

Contact Information: Contact Information Paula Batista Lide Multimídia - Assessoria de Imprensa Fones: +55 41 3016-8083 Celular: +55 41 8803-8181 Email: redacao2@lidemultimidia.com.br Site: www.lidemultimidia.com.br msn: paulafbatista@hotmail.com skype: paula_lide