Mid-air collision over Brasil

[rmac]

Just a small thought to add on the "changing the system" line of thought.

If transponders are an important part of the safety chain in airspace when related to separation, why not make the warning of a transponder failure/disconnect similar to that of an autopilot failure/disconnect ?

[PBL]

Originally Posted by rmac

If transponders are an important part of the safety chain in airspace when related to separation, why not make the warning of a transponder failure/disconnect similar to that of an autopilot failure/disconnect ?

I was about to say that such options are being seriously considered as a consequence of the NTSB recommendation, but then I actually looked it up. NTSB A-07-37 recommends to make pilots aware of loss-of-transponder annunciations, but doesn't go as far as to suggest modifying the warning.

The recommendations can be found at http://www.ntsb.gov/recs/letters/2007/A07_35_37.pdf
and the
EUROCAE WG49 Working Paper (Aug 2007) at http://adsb.tc.faa.gov/SC209_Meeting...%2008%2007.pdf

PBL

[aviadornovato]

The second is that if criminal proceedings in the wake of accidents persistently and pervasively miss the mark, as we know they do from many other cases besides Linate, then there is a case for a general moratorium on criminal proceedings until there is some means of ensuring that the "wrong" people do not get blamed. This is why, for example, the Governor of Illinois, while a death-penalty supporter, instituted a moratorium on executions until the courts can be sure that no mistakes are made.

PBL,

The debate is indeed very interesting.

I think that part of the problem has its roots in the lack of an effort (or visibility of such an effort) for a sufficiently extensive, precise and continuosly improved (in its objectiveness and clarity) set of rules to be followed by controllers, pilots and aviation industry managers in general.

It might seem wrong by some but if people in the Judiciary don't see a quest for accountability and clear delimitation of responsabilities in such a safety critical industry like aviation then we unfortunately will continue to see this trend of excessive "criminalization" of conducts after each accident.

Prosecutors and judges will keep forcing the industry to seek clear rules for the delimitation of the responsabilities of all parties involved. I very much doubt that a moratorium on criminal prosecutions would be accepted by those guys.

I think the best solution would be a continuous effort of delimitation of responsabilities through regulation. The directives should be more detailed on the procedures and ON THE RESPONSABILITIES of all the players envolved regarding those procedures.

This would prevent irresponsable criminal lawsuits when a given situation wasn´t foreseen by such very precise and exact regulations.

I will give you an example that relates to the GOL 1907/Legacy collision:

a) Controllers should give exact, standardized and CORRECT (as to altitude, etc) clearances to pilots on departure and ask for confirmation. If there is some change in a previously filed flight plan, then they should make this circumstance explicit;

b) Pilots should ask for confirmation and question non-standardized clearances;

c) Depending on the number of monitored a/cs, parallel situations, etc, a controller should have a maximum time allowed for the delay to order a necessary FL change (when an a/c enters a giver airway, for example) AND NOT KEEP WAITING UNTIL THE TWO A/Cs ARE TOO CLOSE AND CONTACT WITH ONE OF THEM IS LOST AND HE CAN´T ORDER A FL CHANGE TO EITHER AIRCRAFT BECAUSE HE IS NOT SURE ABOUT ONE OF THE ACs FL ANYMORE AS ITS TRANSPONDER IS OFF (AND AS STATED HE CAN´'T CONTACT THIS A/C BY RADIO TO CONFIRM ITS FL THE OLD FASHIONED WAY - excuse me for the capital letters ) ;

d) ATC authorities should provide a minimum infraestructure regarding personnel, hardware and software as well as the organization of ATC itself (don't you ask me to put the details here, but it should be detailed);

e) The a/c crew should have a minimum knowledge of a given aircraft and constantly monitor the warnings given by the a/c system, like those relating to transponder and TCAs activity. This should be extensive detailed for a given a/c model;

f) The a/c crew should be given a set of frequencies (including alternative ones) to use in a given sector and should keep and use it when necessary;

etc.

If the regulations established those specific and detailed procedures and "duties" in the future (if they are pertinent or not is another story) then everything out of such circumstances would be likely to block any criminal procedure.

The problem now is that it seems that the rules aren't clear and detailed enough and, what is even worse, it seems that people out there in the aviation industry are not that concerned with it as they should be.

[PBL]

Originally Posted by aviador novato

I think the best solution would be a continuous effort of delimitation of responsabilities through regulation. .............
I will give you an example that relates to the GOL 1907/Legacy collision:

Well, I sympathise with your suggestion that a clearer delimitation of responsibilities might help against criminalisation, but in such a project I would worry that the systems science would be overridden by political considerations. For example, in the German legal system there is a clear delimitation of responsibilities: the people at the "pointy end" of the Lathen Maglev accident are being prosecuted, whereas the managers who decided against incorporating service vehicles into the technical protection system are not being prosecuted. But whichever way it goes, someone is still being prosecuted.

Your specific suggestions in the wake of the GOL/Legacy collision suffer, if I may say so, from a significant lack of understanding of how air traffic control operates. This is not the place for me to write a tutorial on ATC, but please bear the following in mind.

* I have been flying IFR for 23 years (although not recently). In this time, I have almost never had a "cleared as filed" pre-take-off clearance, and I cannot recall ever flying the clearance I was given pre-take-off; there are always en-route changes. The idea that a pilot can be given a pre-take-off clearance that will take himher to the destination free of modification is a pipe dream. It is also unnecessary, as the next point shows.

* The system in the U.S. deals with 85,000 movements a day, which amounts to some 25-30 million movements a year. Let's assume that has grown from (I guess) 15 million movements in, say, 1987. That is of the order of 10^9 movements total since 1987, *without a collision between two aircraft flying under IFR*. (There have been collisions between IFR and VFR aircraft, but that is a different matter, since we are talking here about revising the system of clearances). That is an *extremely good safety record* by any standards (O(10^9) is the Holy Grail of highly-reliably-system designers). One simply doesn't propose to change such a system radically, as you are. One proposes to bolster its identified weaknesses.

* Some of the suggestions you make just don't seem to make sense (for example, what is a "correct" clearance? A clearance is an ATC promise to keep a certain block of airspace clear of other controlled aircraft for a certain period of time; what is a "correct" promise? Accepting a clearance is likewise a promise to maintain one's AC in that block during that time). Others are impractical (not only imagining that the system can be managed quasi-statically, but also imagining that pilots can check whether the clearance they get conforms to local ATC procedures, which can be very complicated: that is why controllers are licenced for specific control jobs).

PBL

[GlueBall]

Transponder/TCAS failure warning . . .

And what to do when your tpx/tcas goes on vacation en route? It's not a situation where you'd be landing at the nearest suitable airport, nor vacate your RVSM airspace without talking to somebody. A "warning" annunciation of a tpx/tcas failure in flight wouldn't have been a cause for the Legacy crew to have changed route or altitude on their own. One option in case of known system failure would be to offset cruise flight level by 150 feet.

[aviadornovato]

For example, in the German legal system there is a clear delimitation of responsibilities: the people at the "pointy end" of the Lathen Maglev accident are being prosecuted, whereas the managers who decided against incorporating service vehicles into the technical protection system are not being prosecuted. But whichever way it goes, someone is still being prosecuted.

Maybe the people at the "pointy end" really didn't do what they had to independently of the management having refused to incorporate service vehicles into the technical protection system.

I believe that in German Law the managers you mentioned COULD have been prosecuted if their conduct clearly showed an injustified disregard for safety. We should ask the german prosecutors why they weren't.

Not all prosecutions are unfair or irresponsible. My point was that prosecutions tend to be broader and many times exaggerated if there isn't a clear delimitation of responsabilities by a given industry.

As for the examples of regulation and clear delimitation of responsabilities, they were just given to show what this clear delimitation of responsabilities would be.

Asking the pilot to ask for a standardized IFR clearance, for instance, just means that he should know whether or not he should try to contact ATC to ask permission to change his FL if he doesn´t get the expected clearance to change FL a considerable time after he enters another airway in which he is expected to change said FL.

Asking the pilot to follow his fight plan and to know what are the FLs he was supposed to fly in each airway would help to prevent accidents. If he is not contacted by ATC, he should at least ask for confirmation of his (supposedly wrong) FL from ATC.

You might say that it could represent an overburden to controllers (answering requests from pilots in such circumstances) but it also could work in the opposite direction as pilots (or crews) would act as a backup to ATC. And increase the likelihood of net being killed themselves

Anyway, the main point is:

If (IF !!) those were the rules, and they weren´t followed, then we have a prosecution. If all the regulations were followed, however, no matter the conduct of pilots or controllers we won´t have a criminal lawsuit.

(P.S.: I am refering to future rules on this matter, not specifically to the GOL/Embraer collision)

[marciovp]

NTSB recomendations are clear...

From the NTSB:

Therefore, the Safety Board believes that the FAA should require, for all aircraft required to have TCAS installed and for existing and future system designs,14 that the airborne loss of collision avoidance system functionality, for any reason, provide an enhanced aural and visual warning requiring pilot acknowledgment. This is an important consideration for the development of runway incursion collision avoidance systems, as well. Without aural and visual warning requiring pilot acknowledgement, there would be a loss of runway incursion avoidance system functionality if a system on an individual aircraft were to fail or be inadvertently turned off. Therefore, the Board believes that the FAA should evaluate the feasibility of providing enhanced aural and visual warnings for future systems that may provide ground collision avoidance functionality. If feasible, require that future design criteria include such warning functionality

[ATC Watcher]

Aviatornovato : Your vision on how ATC should be regulated and performed is just that : a vision, a concept, based on 100% safety at all times trying to take into account all possible failures and multiple failures combinations. It is laudable, if applied traffic would be reduced to such an extend that it will not be economically viable.
Safety in Aviation is always a trade off . In ATC, safety is first, but expediting the traffic and providing capacity to cater for the continuous traffic growth is a very close second.
As an EASA ( European Aviation Safety Agency )top official recently said : Safety must not restrain the market "
You have to understand that a pre-departure clearance , past the first altitude, point to be flown to and SSR code becomes more a " wish list" than a contract set in stone.
Arguing a criminal case against pilots or controllers based on incomplete or incorrect pre-departure ATC clearance will be easy to wipe off technically.

On the transponder issue : More an more ANSPs are declaring their airspace SSR only ( Portugal for one ) making a loss of Transponder a real safety issue. I would think that to pass a proper safety cases States relying on SSSR only for their ATC , a proper warning in the cockpit that SSR has failed would be an mandatory item.
I am surprised that after this accident the NTSB only " believes that the FAA should require" i a warning . For me, and there I agree with you, the lesson to this accident should be asking for a modification .
And I am not adding the TCAS issue.

[aviadornovato]

Safety in Aviation is always a trade off . In ATC, safety is first, but expediting the traffic and providing capacity to cater for the continuous traffic growth is a very close second.
As an EASA ( European Aviation Safety Agency )top official recently said : Safety must not restrain the market "
You have to understand that a pre-departure clearance , past the first altitude, point to be flown to and SSR code becomes more a " wish list" than a contract set in stone.
Arguing a criminal case against pilots or controllers based on incomplete or incorrect pre-departure ATC clearance will be easy to wipe off technically.

ATCWatcher,

I proposed adherence to Flight Plans on the grounds that airways should have predefined FLs between waypoints in order to avoid collisions and also predefined rules on FL in case of lost communication. So a clearance that didn´t adhere to a filed flight plan would have to be avoided IMHO.

I will stress that my instance for adherence to flight plans derives mostly from the possibility of a communication loss. If the possibility of a communication loss is considerably reduced then I think that predefined FLs really would not have that importance.

BTW I read some posts in the "TCAs philosophy" thread and I think the main issue was the potential discrepancy between a TCAS RA and a FL change ordered by ATC.

Well, maybe if we had predefined rules regarding FL changes given a certain airway and A/C direction equally applicable to RAs and ATC ordered FL changes then this might (might) not be an issue anymore.

I really don´t know if such changes would increase or reduce the costs of ATC. I am not even 50% certain they would be really helpful but I would like to see some discussion about.

Regarding the NXL600/GOL1907 collision, after reading the data from the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies Commission Report I concluded that the main cause was Brasilia ATC simply "forgetting" the NXL600 flying at the wrong altitude even though THEY HAD ALL DATA to order the appropriate FL change when the aircraft entered the UZ6 airway and before the Legacy´s transponder went off and contact with the A/C was lost.

So the problem wasn´t exactly the wrong clearance given at S. Jose dos Campos.

[barit1]

So the problem wasn´t exactly the wrong clearance given at S. Jose dos Campos.

No, that clearance wasn't wrong at all - it was an initial clearance, pending updates according to later traffic conditions.

[ATC Watcher]

Aviadornovato :
many points in your post above deserving long answers, but due to lack of time , I will only take the first one :
you said :

I proposed adherence to Flight Plans on the grounds that airways should have predefined FLs between waypoints in order to avoid collisions and also predefined rules on FL in case of lost communication. So a clearance that didn’t adhere to a filed flight plan would have to be avoided IMHO.

That is a correct assumption if we were talking about Procedural control, i.e not radar control. In a radar control environment the minimum separation criteria is 5NM or 1000 ft. How to achieve this is dynamic, and flexible ( i.e. radar vectoring, anticipating or delaying planned climbs or descents, etc.. ) Therefore in radar control airspace you can ( and many do ) use all the altitudes at your disposition regardless of Flight plan or predefined altitudes on the airways or tracks.
Radar control also imply full 2 way radio telephony capability at all times.
So if we were in a full radar environment the clearances issued by the Brasilia Controllers were not abnormal, nor " wrong ". The problem lies in the fact that , in our case, both radar and VHF communications were lost.
Now, and there it is my own interpretation : As far as I can see, in CINDACTA 1 , for whatever reason ( having to do perhaps with national pride or for hiding the fact that the military are not being able to cover the whole Amazonas ) is providing radar service and separation in deficient areas. We learned that there are large areas declared " radar area" which in fact are areas of poor or no VHF radio coverage and no civil radar coverage.
In those areas , procedural control should have been in place , i.e altitude separation and 10 minutes between aircraft.
Procedural control is totally different from Radar and need different training. We are not sure that the staff in CINDACTA 1 are procedurally trained.

Comm failures :
We have not been able to asses yet which procedure apply in Brazil in case of radio communication failure : the US one or the worldwide ICAO one .

Now about your statement that the system was showing the right Flight level, this is incorrect ,and is part of the main cause of this accident . Nobody willingly “ forgets “ an aircraft or the level at which it is in reality. A combination of technical and human factors led someone to believe that the Legacy was 1000 Ft higher that in was in reality.
Eliminating that from happening again is the issue. Looking for controllers or pilot “errors” will only delay the corrections that will prevent another accident.

One thing is for sure, if the system is not changed, it is only a matter of time until you have another accident.

[songbird29]

ATC is not a railway system

Avia wrote

I proposed adherence to Flight Plans on the grounds that airways should have predefined FLs between waypoints in order to avoid collisions and also predefined rules on FL in case of lost communication. So a clearance that didn’t adhere to a filed flight plan would have to be avoided IMHO.

ATCwatcher responded

That is a correct assumption if we were talking about Procedural control, i.e not radar control.

Avia's thinking is not a correct assumption, under no circumstance. An ATC system bases on fixed adherance to the flightplan is always impossible, also in a procedural system. In this context, the only difference between radar and procedural is the time/distance of separation, 5 NM or a number of minutes. Also in a procedural ATC system aircraft may end up being in conflict with each other on the basis of their static flightplans. It is the dynamic system of ATC, be it procedural or radar based, which resolves these conflicts by telling the pilot to climb or descend to another confict-free flightlevel.

In fact, it's the old discussion with people who think in terms of a fixed railway system where trains can be put to a standstill. If it's a mess on the railway tracks, one could eventually stop all trains. Not very nice for the train passengers, very awkward indeed, but nobody will get killed in trains which are not moving anymore. In the air you cannot stop a single aircraft. They need to keep moving, for obvious reasons.

[ATC Watcher]

Songbird :

An ATC system bases on fixed adherance to the flightplan is always impossible,

I disagree. Of course you may be right in the absolute , especially if you look at today's Procedural environement , when some procedural airspace ( e.g the NAT) move much more traffic that way than some radar airspace ( e.g Albania ).
But what I understood "aviadornovado" said was not that : I think he refered to FL allocation , and there, this is true , this method can be used to separate conflicting traffic procedurally from one another, both on crossing, and when on dual-directions tracks or aiwrways.

In the 1970,s there were aispace ( e.g Greece , pre-radar times or Siberia if you want some examples among many others) which had some airways restricted to a few FL only (250 280 and 350 for instance,) 15 minutes longitudinal. With a system like this you move 10 a/c an hour but it was sufficient and safe enough in those days. If Brazil has opted for a basic system like this on the Amazonas to compensate their lack of radar coverage, we would not be here today discussing their collision.

But then of course , Brazil would not move that many aircraft around as in the current system .

[songbird29]

I disagree. Of course you may be right

No, ATCwatcher, you mix up procedural control with a Flight Level Allocation system, which is not the same.

Procedural control is applied where radar is absent. Under procedural control any level may be used in accordance with the semicircular system. Flightplanning is similar in both radar-based and procedural systems. ATC interventions to provide separation are also similar. Strict adherance to the flightplan during flight is never the case, impossible in fact as I have argued.

A Flight Level Allocation System as a method to strategically separate aircraft may be applied both in procedural as well as in radar control.

Aviadornovado may indeed have thought of FL allocation in his reasoning. FL allocation is indeed a method to strategically separate aircraft, in order to reduce the need and workload for tactical separation by the controller. As far as I've understood (but here I stand for correction since you have followed the Brazilian collision and its aftermath much closer) FLAS was not the case in Brazil.

In the Amazonas it looks indeed like the application of procedural control for those parts of the flights going through non-radar areas. Nothing wrong with that. Any region out of radar range where ADS is not yet applied is controlled in this manner. E.g Northern North Sea until the day of today and indeed south-eastern Europe, not only Greece, in the 70s. In those days the Austrians had to bear the brunt over Villach VOR where for eastbound traffic the longitudonal separation had to be changed from some 10 NM radar to 10 or 15 minutes procedural. The difficulties of this changeover from a radar based area in western Europe to procedural control for traffic to the southeast led to Flight Level allocation in that area, and also to Flow Control which was later organised and improved to present-day Flow Management by the CMFU in Europe.

This brings me to say that "new" ATC-overloaded areas like Brazil and India are in dire need of a Flow Management System to safely cope with their problems.

[Rob21]

In a region where radar coverage is sometimes lost (i.e. Black Holes over the Amazon), it doesn't make sense to have a 2-way airway.
I've seen airway modifications due to pressure from pilots and airlines.

Navigation nowadays is so accurate, why do we need a 2-way airway over the Amazon? One way between virtual waypoints, routes can be paralel...

Just a thought...

[ATC Watcher]

Songbird :
Your English is far better that mine, aso you explain this shorter an better. (I indeed beleived Mr Aviatornovado was refereing to FLAS in his questions)
No disagreement anymore with your reasoning.

From what we have learned in Brazil , it would appear that the semi circular is used as a form of FLAS in the known-to-them non-radar areas, but remember this whole airspace is declared full radar everywhere by the military. So for the outside world , radar procedures apply ( and any non-Brazilian pilot would not be alarmed to keep its last assigned altitude ,even if it contradicted the published semi-circular )
This is for me one of the contributing factors of this collision , among many others of course.

Rob 21 :
Yes indeed , introducing dual tracks in what most of us are doing in busy airspace. Not only safer , but far easier to control the traffic. And today with RNP5 it is dead easy to do so. I would not be surprised if either the CENIPA/NTSB report do not mention this in their recommendations, or if quietly, the Brazilians did not introduce this in the meantime.

[RatherBeFlying]

aviadornovato and others have suggested that flight levels should automatically change if a route segment in the flight planned route changes direction between easterly and westerly tracks from the last route segment.

Doing this would create substantial extra workload for ATC.

Consider an a/c at FL200 that has to change from an even altitude in a westerly segment, say 350 degrees, at waypoint X to an odd altitude in the succeeding easterly segment, say FL210 at 010 degrees.

An opposite direction a/c approaching X at FL200 tracking 190 degrees (westerly) has to change from even to odd altitude, say FL210, when changing track to 170 degrees (easterly).

ATC has to ensure that both a/c are past each other before clearing them to trade flight levels.

ATC also has to ensure that the climb and descent do not conflict with following a/c. There are some casino dealers who can shuffle a deck with great efficiency, but this is not something ATC would want to do.

Workload is far more manageable with a/c remaining at their cleared altitude.

[Richard_Brazil]

Here's an update on the situation of the investigation in Brazil. I'm not a pilot, or a lawyer. I try to pay attention, though.

The aviation investigating commission held a general meeting at the end of November 2007, which should have started the clock on the 60-day comment period. However, in December, the Legacy pilots and the ATC controllers agreed to speak to the investigators. Which put the final report on hold. Col. Rufino, heading the investigation, was in the U.S. in December 2007, but schedule conflicts prevented a meeting with the pilots. Information from the January 17 Folha de S.Paulo.

The criminal trial in the Sinop, Mato Grosso, federal court is awaiting a decision by a superior court on whether that court or a military court has jurisdiction to try the air traffic controllers. Over a year ago the Military Prosecutor-General said on the radio that it's a matter for the common, not the military, courts, so it's hard to see this as a knotty legal question.

In the U.S., over a hundred civil suits have been unified into a single case in the Federal Court in Brooklyn, under judge Brian Cogan. Lawyers had until just about New Years to submit additional documents and arguments on whether the suits should be heard in the U.S., or sent to Brazil. He is to decide the question around the start of April. U.S. courts would award a multiple of what Brazilian courts would, so it's by far the most important question in the suits. The Brazilian lawyer with the second-largest number of clients in the accident says he expects the cases to be heard in the U.S. He admits his fees would be higher if that's the case, so he may be engaged in wishful thinking.

Questions were asked here on the Gol 1907 black box. The last minute or so of the black box were played on Brazil's TV Record on December 9. You can find the clip online on the network's site, although I can't find a way to link directly. The site is http://www.mundorecordnews.com.br/record.jsp . Put your mouse on "TV Record", then "Domingo Espetacular", click, and a menu of clips appears, some forty pages' worth. Currently it's on page 18. The title of the segment is "9/12 Os minutos finais do acidente da Gol", and currently it's on page 18. Easiest is to put "18" in the lower-rightmost field on the screen, click on the arrow, and browse from there. It's nine minutes, 15 seconds.

It is, of course, in Portuguese.

The recording is accompanied by a CGI simulation that's inaccurate to the point of fraud. It shows the airplane reaching the treetops almost intact. Four times. At 3:47, 4:48, 6:49 and at 8:31. The flight recorder stopped at about 7,800 feet, as the plane came apart. The debris was scattered in a 500 meter arc, and bodies, their clothes ripped off by the wind, were found atop the first fragment discovered. The cockpit was intact, though, with the pilots' bodies found inside.

The clip also included commentary by a Brazilian pilot, who after doing instant, and inaccurate, analysis of a series of Brazilian airplane accidents, starred in one in January. You can read about him here: http://sharkeyonbrazil.*************...his-plane.html

The Brazilian says he has no doubt the American pilots are to blame for the crash. He also says that the Gol pilots lowered the landing gear to slow the plane, although the lever in the cockpit was in the retracted position. And that most of the passengers reached the ground alive, if they had their seatbelts fastened. Despite the fuselage being scattered over half a kilometer of the Amazon forest.

The one I like best though, is where he says the pilots turned the engines off to bring the Boeing to the ground in a glide. While I am not a pilot, that seems to cross the line from the ridiculous to the absurd.

The CPI, or parliamentary commission of inquiry, that looked at the aviation crisis including the Gol crash proposed a bill on the manner in which aviation accidents are investigated. This page http://www.camara.gov.br/internet/si....asp?id=377306 says the bill "Legislates on the System for the Prevention of Aeronautic Accidents (SIPAER), the inviolability of the secrecy of its investigations and other measures."
The progress of the bill can be followed at the address above, but it will probably be like following continental drift.

The bill seems to be heavily influenced by the accident investigation bureau, CENIPA. It attempts, for example, to explain that when an investigation finds something that might have been a factor in the accident, and therefore could be a factor in a future accident, recommendations are made to fix the problem. But that doesn't mean that the factor actually played a role in the accident being investigated.

While the bill attempts to maintain the independence and primacy of aeronautic investigations, it does not take a stand on criminalization. On black box recordings, the accompanying explanation says that the flight recorder would go to Cenipa, and then to the police. The police might have to make their own transcription, despite the additional cost, as a way of insuring the independence of the Cenipa investigation.

From the point of view of pilots, however, the bill says that if you are involved in an aviation accident in Brazil, the black box will go to the police. And, based on experience, it will then be leaked to the press and the public at large.

- Richard

[Richard_Brazil]

Some clarifications of facts

I have just looked over the past five months of posts. There are some bits of news from Brazil that are misleading or simply false. Some of them are lies, that is the authors made up "facts" which they assumed posters here would not or could not check.

Things seem currently quiet, so this seems a good time for some clarifications, before things heat up with the eventual release of the Cenipa report. So here goes:

• The CENIPA draft report has not been leaked.

• While the House CPI preliminary report accused both the Legacy pilots and the controllers, the final report accused only the pilots. That was not a technical but a political decision, according to the official House news agency:

The report referee of the Aviation Crisis CPI, congressman Marco Maia (PT-RS), accepted, shortly before approving the report, a suggestion by congressman Miguel Martini (PHS-MG) to remove from the text the typification of the supposed crimes committed by the air traffic controllers. The removal was an agreement among all the congressmen on the commission. The report still carries the names of the five controllers, but without characterizing crimes. Maia explained that the Prosecutors' Office has already concluded the investigation of these controllers, and it was the CPI's political position to not indict them. (http://www2.camara.gov.br/internet/h...html?pk=111308)

• The House CPI preliminary report was 170 pages, in translation, and dealt exclusively with the Gol 1907 tragedy. The final report, 713 pages, dealt also with the TAM Airbus crash and the aviation system in general, and seemed to include the portion related to Gol 1907 largely unchanged. I didn't compare the two reports page by page, but looked at minor errors such as "level" where "limit" was meant, and found them uncorrected, so I've assumed the rest was not revised. Only the conclusions changed, by political decision. The English version of the preliminary report can be found at js.biztravelife.com/preliminary.pdf

• Regarding the initial clearance given to the Legacy pilots, it was given and properly confirmed by the pilots as 37,000 feet to Manaus. That's on page 54-55 of the translated report cited above.

• The CPI report makes clear that Brazilian controllers had a habit of giving only the first level in the clearance, as was done with Legacy N600XL. The report says on page 38:

From everything that has been set out, it may be concluded that the issuance of a message with partial authorization for an aircraft’s flight is a procedure without any grounding in rules and procedures.

In other words, the controllers were following habits, not the rules. Unfamiliar with Brazilian airspace, the Legacy pilots followed the published rules. That's what rules are for, and that's why they're published. So everyone can know what they are, and follow them.

• The radio problem is far clearer with a sector map, and alas the sector map in the preliminary report compressed to illegibility. But, let's look at Page 71:

Combined with information from Technical Report 1.187/07-INC: the Legacy is leaving ACC-Brasilia Sector 5, and entering ACC-Brasilia Sector 7, receiving instructions from the Sector 5 controller to change radio to frequency 125.05 in the new sector.

Frequency 125.05 is correct for Sector 9, which the Legacy never entered, and which was aft and starboard of it at that moment, and got father aft as it flew. The frequency could be heard for perhaps another 120 nautical miles beyond Brasilia, but the Legacy had passed beyond reach by the time the Sector 7 controller first attempted to call it.

• The Legacy continued to hear chatter in Portuguese though, never going more than seven minutes without some radio traffic, but not knowing the language was unaware it was hearing only the air portions of conversations. By great misfortune, just before the collision as the co-pilot was calling Brasilia, he heard a message from Brasilia to him, with exactly the words "in blind" inaudible, and assumed he was being answered. The pilots were not required to make contact until the handoff to Manaus, just about the time of the collision, and had no reason to believe they were out of contact.

• Of the non-emergency frequencies listed on the navigation chart for Sector 7, three of four were disabled at the controller's console. Control center tapes captured calls by N600XL to two of the three frequencies, and on the ground soon after the collision the copilot testified he'd tried the third. ATC tried only one frequency to reach N600XL.

• The Federal Police investigation of the Gol 1907 accident relies heavily on a translation of the Legacy's voice data recorder. That transcription was leaked to the press on Sunday of Carnaval last year. The Federal Police translation is criminally poor. Even numbers are mistranslated. See page 70 of the preliminary report for three incorrect numbers (The gray background is the PF's Portuguese on the left, with equivalent English to the right; the white background has original English on the right, with an accurate translation on the left.)
  
  Some phrases widely quoted are so incorrect as to suggest bad faith. One of the pilots was quoted on the front page of the leading newspaper as having said after the collision, the Portuguese equivalent of "So what if we hit someone?" In fact what he said was "What if we hit something?"

There is a tendency in the Brazilian press to assume that everything is an opinion, that there are two sides to every question, and that if the Federal Police translate 17,000 pounds of fuel as 1,700 pounds of fuel, well that's an official view that has to be respected. That's a load of hooey. 15,300 pounds' worth.

- Richard

[marty1468]

Oi Richard,

Tudo bem?

I have been keeping a keen eye on this topic as i was in Brazil with my wife (who is from Sao Caetano Do Sul) when this crash happened.

I'm a little amazed at the corruption going on but my wife says this is very normal. I guess you have to expect that sort of thing when the military runs your airspace. I dont like the chances of Brazil getting the american pilots back for a trial so i guess that lawyer with the most clients probably wont be getting his huge (expected) fee huh?

Anyway thanks for the update.

Marty