... during the trip to USA, still in brazilian skies, the Legacy jet was flying at 37,000 feet high when the rules of traffic determine it should be at 36,000 feet or 38,000 feet of altitude.
This jet crashed with an Boeing airliner (GOL Airlines) and 154 people died. What do you think about that ?
2006-10-31 03:10:18 · 2 answers · asked by ? 7 in Cars & Transportation ➔ Aircraft
SOP. Can anyone explain what is it for and its origin ?
2006-10-31 21:08:24 · update #1
Well where else would you buy a brand new Brazilian jet?
There's lots of news coverage of this crash.
Basically the Legacy should have changed altitude when it turned north, up until that time they were at the correct altitude. The crew claim that they were attempting to contact the controllers at the time of the incident, seeking permission to descend to their planned altitude. Their SOP in the face of no instructions is to continue at their assigned altitude, aircraft in controlled airspace always have to have explicit permission before they vary their altitude, even if their flight plan does call for it. So the crew are responsible for doing as they are told and the ATCs are responsible for making sure nobody runs into anything solid.
Brazil was claiming that the American crew switched off their transponder, however they have spirited away the air traffic controllers and there is considerable internal argument going on in Brazil. Even if the transponder on the Legacy was not working the ATCs should have handled that, they should have informed the aircraft that it wasn't returning an altitude and asked them to resolve the issue. If that could not be done then they should have tracked the aircraft and kept it clear of anything else in 2D rather than 3D space.
Without a working transponder the aircraft might have been difficult to track, you normally don't track a radar return, you track a transponder return. But the ATCs would have seen that one of their charges had gone missing and that should have triggered an immediate response.
I wouldn't like to be in the US pilots shoes right now, but I expect time will show that they didn't do anything wrong.
2006-10-31 03:50:37 · answer #1 · answered by Chris H 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
SOP means Standard Operating Procedure. To be certified, a charter operator would have to show the Flight Standards District Office that all pilots they employ are trained in a standard way and they are all operating the aircraft per the Operations Manual.
2006-11-01 18:23:24 · answer #2 · answered by mach_92 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋