In a key legal step toward assigning blame for Brazil's deadliest plane crash, two U.S. pilots and four Brazilian air traffic controllers were indicted on charges equivalent to involuntary manslaughter for a mid-air collision that killed 154 people.

Judge Murilo Mendes on Friday ordered the two U.S. pilots to appear in Brazil in late August to give preliminary depositions. But a lawyer for the pilots suggested the men would not return.

The charges were filed by a prosecutor last week in a federal court in Sinop, a small city near the Amazon jungle site where a jetliner plunged into the rain forest last September after colliding with an executive jet flown by the Americans.

All 154 people aboard the Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes SA passenger plane died. The executive jet landed safely.

The pilots of the smaller aircraft — Joseph Lepore, 42, of Bay Shore, N.Y., and Jan Paul Paladino, 34, of Westhampton, N.Y. — were charged with negligently exposing an aircraft to danger. The charge is similar to involuntary manslaughter because deaths occurred, and is punishable by one to three years in prison, said court spokesman Fabio Paz.

A lawyer for the pilots said the charges were unfounded. "The pilots' conduct was completely competent throughout the flight and cannot be fairly characterized as criminal," said Joel R. Weiss. "The allegations against the pilots are inaccurate, and the pilots are innocent." He blamed Brazilian air traffic controllers for putting the two planes on a collision course, "on the same airway and altitude, traveling toward each other."

(Published by The Brazilian, June 4, 2007)