Originally Posted by
Hokie Nation
I know that he was trying to communicate with anyone on many differnet freqs, including Guard The CVR has this on tape, and no, there was not seven attempts on the CVR from Cindacta-1 (Brasilia), that is innacurate. Both of us are type rated on the Legacy, and the NORDO procedure is to STAY at your last assigned altitude...370...and squawk 7600. The Legacy has a rotary transponder and the AD applies to this transponder unfortunately.
Hokie Nation , your post indicates that you have either seen the CVR transcript of the Legacy or talked to someone who had.
If the Legacy pilot had tried to call on guard, surely that has been noted and recorded by others, as every ATC unit monitor and records 121,5 .
If the 7 attempts from Brasilia are not on the Legacy CVR, it would indicate they were not on the same frequency , the most common ,and by far, reason for the Comm failures. But normal procedure is to revert to previous Frequency, but if not immediately dedected, by that time you might be out of range .
The NORDO procedures you refer to are the FAA AIM procedures, (i.e in IFR conditions, the pilot is expected to follow the last instructions given by ATC ) which are only valid inside the USA and differ significantly from the ICAO ones .( see the excellent post of PPRuNe Radar on this )
If Brazil follows ICAO rules, the latter will apply unfortunately.That could be one of the discussion points. But if your friend is an ex AA ( as reported elsewhere ) he surely would know the diffrence .
The AD should not normally apply to the Legacy transponder , as this is a brand new unit and Honeywell has fixed the problem already some time ago.
Unless of course the avionic fitted on the aircrfat were not new.
On the other hand if indeed the investigation finds out that the transponder went AGAIN into stand by mode uncommanded, and this is on a brand new unit, then Honeywell, and owners of many 145's are going to loose a lot of money.
As to ATC, I am waiting to read the Telephone coordination transcripts between ACC Brasilia and Manaus to make a judgement, as I believe, here lies one of the main causes of the collision. (regardless of the transponder/ comm failure or not issue )
I will not comment on the " Banana republics" words, other to say that for a first post, you could perhaps be a bit more polite and respecful of other cultures when talking to other professionals.