gol collision
hello every one,
let's make some more hypothesis of this catastrophic event
1) the legacy crew: was well aware of a required flightlevel change after brasilia vor/dme. unable to contact atc for whatever reason: unknown temporary blackhole effect,fingertrouble with their comm radio(s), wrong frequency, intermittent elec failure, anything... . INITIALLY, rightfully maintained their last cleared & acknowledged flightlevel. they were defacto in a commfailure situation for about an hour until the collision & there is indeed an icao procedure to cover this event( in simplified version) : maintain your last acknowledged fl FOR 7 MINUTES(to allow time for atc to coordinate other traffic)THEN ADJUST LEVEL ACCORDING TO YOUR FILED FLIGHT PLAN & follow your filed flightplanned route until over your destination, then land within 30minutes.
the legacy crew instinctively followed this procedure(you dont change fl without atc authorisation), but maybe lacked the situational awareness that they were in a full blown emergency comm. failure situation. and here we come to the heart of the matter: if no radiocontact can be established: put your transponder on 7600(radiofail code) & X CHECK IF THE BLOODY THING IS WORKING/REPLYING(no amber fail/caution light on). then check your comm radios/audioboxes,mikes,boommikes circuitbreakers, qrh commfailure etc.
then, if you are satisfied your equipment is ok, start tranmitting blind on the worldwide emergency frequency 121.5 in order to raise someone on the frequency. all atc centers monitor this & most airline companies have it as a policy to monitor 121.5 on their comm n°2, during cruise. as a last resort, although not an official procedure, go 1nmRight offset of the awy. look up your jeppesen emergency radio comm. section to check what else you can do.( the 7 minutes period is mentioned in this section).& yes, put the mark one eyeball in full alert.
but, i am the first to admit, with hindsight it is easier said than done.
now brasilian atc: complete inadequate behavior. after one hour & about seven unsuccessfull calls to the legacy, plus transponder returns off screen, should have realised the legacy had some major technical problems with all their radios & should have taken emergency measures to redirect all possible conflicting traffic e.g the gol 737,away from the legacy. even scramble some fighters to go up & have a look.
conclusion: here we have, as always in such cases, a chain of human/procedural errors, coupled with an electronic box(transponder), that, at a critical time, didn't work as advertised, resulting in the fatal collision.
everyone involved in this tragic accident share some degree of responsibility.
i hope the trial will be fair, but i am afraid that might be wishfull thinking.
ps. about that legacy transponder AD(going in sby if tuned for more than 5secs), this being a brand new aircraft leaving the factory on a delivery flight, one may think this was complied with by the manufacturer.