Post by corsair67 on Oct 4, 2006 11:18:40 GMT 12
This story is from AAP
'Communication lapse' blamed for air crash
By Peter Muello in Rio De Janeiro
October 03, 2006.
INVESTIGATORS are trying to determine how two new aircraft equipped with the latest anti-collision technology clipped each other in flight, in the worst aviation disaster in Brazil's history, with 155 dead.
Brazilian media reports have suggested that a lapse in communication between air traffic controllers in different cities may have led both planes to fly at the same altitude.
Gol airlines Flight 1907, a brand new Boeing 737-800, collided with a Brazilian-made Legacy jet over the Amazon jungle on Friday.
The damaged Legacy landed safely at a nearby air force base, but the larger airliner crashed in dense jungle, killing all 149 passengers and six crew members.
The Brazilian Air Force said both jets were equipped with a Traffic Collision Avoidance System, or TCAS, which monitors other planes and sets off an alarm if they get too close.
"It locks on the other plane's transponders and tells the pilot whether to go up or down,'' aeronautics professor John Hansman said .
"The 737 should have been warned to take evasive action.''
Hansman also noted that air traffic in Brazil - which is larger than the 48 continental United States - is complicated in vast regions that are not covered by radar, especially over the ocean and in the Amazon jungle.
Pilots often propose a route and at certain waypoints check in with controllers who verify the plane's location, altitude and bearing.
"Apparently that process broke down somehow,'' Mr Hansman said.
"When you get to the jungles of Brazil, you have people going in all directions.''
The Rio de Janeiro daily O Globo reported today that air traffic controllers in the city of Manaus cleared the Boeing to fly at 37,000 feet, while controllers in Brasilia, the capital, authorised the Legacy to climb from 35,000 feet to 39,000 feet.
The Agencia Estado news agency reported that the Legacy pilot, Joseph Lepore, and co-pilot Jan Palladino, told police in Mato Grosso yesterday that they had authorisation from Brasilia to fly at 37,000 feet and that the anti-collision equipment never sounded a warning.
The Boeing crashed near in the remote Amazon near Peixoto de Azevedo in the central state of Mato Grosso, some 1,750km northwest of Rio de Janeiro.
As authorities struggle to recover bodies scattered over the dense jungle floor, Brazilian Air
Force announced on that it had recovered the voice recorder and the digital flight data recorder from the Boeing.
Brazil's Civil Aviation Agency said the cause of the crash was impossible to say until the Boeing 737's two recorders, found by search teams today, were examined.
Investigators will be paying close attention to the conversations between the pilots and air traffic controllers, said Dale Oderman, associate professor of aviation technology at Purdue University, who used to fly in Brazil.
