10yrs anniversary of GOL flight 1907

Even TCAS is not reliable. In Russia, a controller's order takes precedence over a TCAS alert but once a Russian pilot leaves Russian airspace, TCAS alerts take priority over a controller's instruction.

Quote: Nareed

Last resort or not, it's very serious.

You had all those robot voices screaming "auto-pilot engaged" and "terrain", etc. If the TCAS was so important than why wasn't their a robot voice yelling "TCAS is not operational"? When the one pilot asked "dude, do you have the TCAS on" (time 5:54 in video) the other one said "yes, the TCAS is on". Presumably he looked at a light or some indicator that showed that it was on.

No, at most he glanced at an instrument and failed to note a tiny little flag that is a visual indicator.

Even ACARS holds error messages in suspense for a minute and groups them according to various rules of priority.

No reason a non functioning TCAS has to announce its state right away... but a tiny little flag on a large instrument dial aint the way to do it. A ten minute delay is fine. The pilots can always pull the breaker on the alarm anyway.

Race car drivers have ALL instruments calibrated so that NORMAL is NOON. All they have to do is glance and see how much below or above Noon the various dials are at.

Pilots have a more complex scan and teh primary instrument is always the airspeed indicator as being in the green.

With a flight data indicator there are flags and lights for everything but they are all tiny.....

Similar accident took place in Austria... (?) Night time. Only three planes on the entire shift. Two of them were head on course, but safety alarms were off and phone trouble distracted the radar screen starer at a critical time. ATC noting the same altitude should have moved one of them up or down LONG before they "met" at 35,o00 feet.

Air traffic control received notice that the Embraer should change altitude to 36,000' and they failed to pass on the command to the pilots. Also ATC stopped receiving a response from the Embraer's transponder 55 minutes before the accident, and they did not notify the pilots.

NTSB determined that all pilots acted properly and were placed on a collision course by a variety of "individual and institutional" air traffic control errors.

Quote: Pacomartin

NTSB determined that all pilots acted properly and were placed on a collision course by a variety of "individual and institutional" air traffic control errors.

I agree. An enemic laziness in Brazilian ATC. I understand only China's ATC is worse... they NEVER authorize any deviation. Pilot has to deviate at his own risk.

Quote: Fleastiff

I agree. An enemic laziness in Brazilian ATC. I understand only China's ATC is worse... they NEVER authorize any deviation. Pilot has to deviate at his own risk.

That is frightening.

Who would have imagined that winglet would shear a wing in half.



You know if they had a very simple system where all even numbered altitudes fly north and odd numbers fly south, you wonder why nobody would catch it, or if they couldn't program in a simple software fix to catch it.

You want scary: A controller ordered an inbound flight to fly the reciprocal of the controller's active runway. This meant the inbound flight was being directed to fly toward ALL the airport's take off traffic. The Pilot and Copilot debated this but did it and then questioned the controller who immediately changed their heading and advised them to speak up more promptly since no controller in the world would ever knowing give such a heading. The controller admitted he misspoke but reprimanded the crew for not speaking up instantly.

In the US uncontrolled traffic below ten thousand does fly at odd or even altitudes depending on magnetic heading. And assigned flight levels often do have built in altitude separation.

Ofcourse Odd plus 500 feet ... depends upon an accurate barometer as well as an alert pilot. And barometric pressure does change so often altimeters have to be reset. An airliner usually has a radio altimeter but a small plane relies on air pressure.

In the middle of nowhere if there are no aids to navigation its often that altitude varies.

Quote: Pacomartin

Who would have imagined that winglet would shear a wing in half.

Intuitively, the 737 should have come off nearly intact and the Legacy should have been in pieces before hitting the ground.

The reality is more complicated.

Two other accidents involving medium commercial jets and small planes ended with the bigger planes going down. These are the PSA and Aeromexico accidents in California (the latter spurred the development of TCAS). But then the small planes involved also went down.

Quote:

You know if they had a very simple system where all even numbered altitudes fly north and odd numbers fly south, you wonder why nobody would catch it, or if they couldn't program in a simple software fix to catch it.

As I recall, the Legacy asked for a specific altitude for some reason. But if their transponder was off, ATC wouldn't have known their altitude, if they showed up on radar at all.

Quote: Nareed

As I recall, the Legacy asked for a specific altitude for some reason. But if their transponder was off, ATC wouldn't have known their altitude, if they showed up on radar at all.

They never determined conclusively why the transponder went off, but afterwards the NTSB said it was possible to turn it off by by using a footrest guard. "It can not be determined exactly how the accident crew commanded the transponder to standby, but the possibility of an unexpected use of the footrest guard, along with other possibilities discussed in the report, serve as important reminders of human ergonomic considerations at preventing inadvertent contacts in actual flying situations".


The Legacy had began flying 44 minutes before the B737, so it basically was at Brasilia when the B737 took off from Manaloa. The flight plan called for the Legacy to change altitudes after it got in Brasilia airspace. There is no record of a request from N600XL (Legacy) to the control agencies to conduct a change of altitude after passing Brasilia. There is also no record of any instruction from air traffic controllers at Brasilia Center to the aircraft, directing a change of altitude.




The Embraer was flying from Rio to Manaus, but it wasn't intending to stop in Brasilia.The B737 was going to stop in Brasilia as part of it's standard route.