Yeah it was an unfortunate accident, but those two were flying along pretty clueless in Brazilian airspace. They had been out of voice contact for a long time, and it wasn’t until the CA went to the back for 20 minutes that the FO tried to find a frequency to get in touch with the controllers. Of course the fault is with Brazilian ATC, and two airplanes should have never been on the same airway. Let’s not ignore their TCAS was in standby, most likely hit by the foot on a pedestal which led to a SAFO after this accident. No one saw TCAS SBY in the screen? There were opportunities to prevent this accident. ATC is to be blamed, but had these two been more professional and focused on their job more, it could have broken the accident chain link. If only they attempted to get a voice frequency sooner. If not the my saw TCAS sby and tried to fix that.


That said, there shouldn’t be a murder charge because no one purposefully tried to cause this accident.