A judge in a Brazilian court has sentenced the American pilots of an Embraer Legacy bizjet, Joseph Lepore and Jan Paul Paladino, to more than four years behind bars for their role in the 2006 crash of a Gol 737 that killed all 154 aboard the airliner when it crashed in the jungles of Brazil. All seven aboard the bizjet survived after the pilots made an emergency landing. In making his ruling, the judge claimed that the pilots failed to confirm that their airplane’s transponder had been working. Honeywell, the company that manufactured the equipment, said it had seen no evidence of a transponder malfunction.
But the judge’s sentence, as you might have heard, is all the more remarkable for the circumstances of the accident.
