Question from a wannabie
You are under positive radar control within Controlled Airspace at FL370. You've filed a flight plan that says you will descend to FL360 at a set point in order to comply with the airway altitude routing requirements.
Is it your responsibility as the commander to request that descent to FL360 or can you assume that ATC is happy for you to maintain FL370 if they do not request that you descend?
Secondly if this is a case of a radio failure, does Brazil have any local instructions which amend the ICAO requirement to maintain your last assigned heading and altitude for 20 minutes before resuming your flight planned altitude and route?
If ATC could not contact the Legacy should they have assumed an RT failure and assumed he would continue at FL370 for 20 minutes and therefore vectored the 737 out of the Legacy's way.
Surely in CAS the commander of the Legacy cannot descend to FL360 without authority from ATC so if they had RT difficulties it's seems perfectly reasonable that the Legacy would maintain FL370.
Is it possible then that the Legacy had some kind of intermittent avionics problem which was switching off the transponder and disabling the radios? Teething problems on new aircraft are not unheard of.
I’d be interested in any positive feedback to the above questions (I may be missing something in my interpretation of the requirements following an RT failure.)
Cheers SW