Mid-air collision over Brasil

[flyingnewbie10]

There are a large number of instructional books out there on obtaining an Instrument Rating in many languages and you need to do some serious reading on IFR flight plans and clearances.

1. Go to your local pilot shop usually located at an airport with private airplanes or ask a local flight instructor to recommend a book.
2. Read the chapters on filing flight plans, obtaining clearances, adhering to clearances and lost communications procedures.

You will learn as has been said repeatedly by every IFR pilot on this thread that:

1. A flight plan proposes a route with requested altitudes at a requested speed at a requested time
2. A clearance is ATC's best effort to accommodate your proposal without conflicting with other traffic.
3. You DO NOT deviate from your clearance without permission from ATC except in an emergency.

As well, there's a good probability the Legacy pilots used a commercial provider to generate their flight plan by computer. Computers can be very particular about adhering to quadrantial flight levels when generating flight plans when ATC will normally prefer to simply assign a single cruising flight level.

RatherBeFlying,

Is there any online source available (aviation organization rules, etc) or book you could recommend ?

From what I was told my conclusion is that the ATC is responsible for Flight Level setting as the flight plan is filed with them and therefore they know it.

The pilot is not supposed to check the plan and ask for clearance when he changes to an airway for which there is another assigned flight level by the flight plan. Instead, ATC has always to contact him and order a FL change.

It seems that in the Legacy case there was a contact with Brasilia but I don't know whether it was long before the Legacy hit the point where in the flight plan it was supposed to descend.

But in this contact ATC said something about the transp. identification and about mantaining FL370. I suppose that even if this contact happened a long time before the Legacy changed airway it proves that ATC brought the Legacy crew into error. As I said, the crew wasn't supposed to ask for confirmation of FL370 after changing airway.

And it seems there was another contact prior to this back in the start of the flight where the Sao Jose dos Campos ATC apparently told the Legacy to maintain FL370 until Manaus.

Again, it seems the pilots weren't supposed to confront this with their flight plan and ask clearance after passing by Brasilia.