12/12/2006
EXAM DOESN'T POINT FLAW IN TRANSPONDER OF LEGACY
Jet that beat Gol Boeing had two antennas of radars.
Technicians believe that pilots would have turned off apparel.
The initial evaluation done by Honeywell, manufacturer of the transponder of the jet Legacy, didn't indicate significant alterations in the equipments of the airplane that it was collided on September 29 with a Gol Boeing. As a source of the Aeronautics, the jet counted with two apparels, and no one. One of the antennas perfectly worked. The second, however, it presented rocking registrations, that were not considered relevant to elucidate the causes of the disconnection.
The jet Legacy beat Gol Boeing on September 29. The airplane of the Brazilian aerial company fell in the North of Mato Grosso and the 154 people that were on board died. Preliminary report of the specialists' commission that investigates the causes of the accident pointed that the transponder of Legacy was turned off and, for that, it was not possible to check the altitude of the jet.
Up to now there is not a plausible explanation on what took the equipment to stop working. It is also unknown why the transponder emitted signs again after the collision. That reinforces the lifted up suspicions soon after the tragedy that the apparel would have been turned off by the American pilots, although unaware, for inobservance of procedures or for 'to test' the jet, making maneuvers.
The military say that the breakdown in a transponder is acceptable. For technicians of the Aeronautics, the disconnection of the transponder is still the cause number one of the collision.
After a trip to the United States, where he accompanied the expertise in the transponder of the jet, colonel Rufino Ferreira, responsible for the investigations, disembarked in Brasília and he sought the controllers that were on duty in the moment of the collision for a first conversation.
http://g1.globo.com/Noticias/Brasil/...98-295,00.html