The point here is that this was a terrible accident, and all aviation accidents involve a series of smaller problems or mistakes that lead up to the major accident. I’m certainly not arguing that the pilots did everything right, but I am arguing that this should not be treated as a criminal act.

The pilots of the legacy jet were in straight and level flights at 37,000 ft despite earlier false reports that they were making dangerous maneuvers. (For the most recent facts, here is the Brazilian report from Nov 22 as released through the US NTSB.) The pilots also made many attempts to contact air traffic control.

There is nothing pointing to malicious intent on behalf of the pilots here. There certainly were missteps, but placing blame does absolutely nothing here. It was a horrible accident, and it should be treated as such.

Why was the transponder not returning consistently throughout the flight? I sure hope they figure it out so that any fixes to existing equipment (onboard or at air traffic control) can be made to prevent this from occurring again.

And should they have tried using HF frequency (if they didn’t, I’m not sure)? Sure, that would have been a good alternative that may have helped prevent the accident, but again this is one of the small things that didn’t happen but could have helped avoid the accident. Filing criminal charges against the pilots is not the right way to approach this.