A Kenya Airways flight had to return and make an emergency landing at O. R. Tambo International Airport, Johannesburg, South Africa, on August 23rd.
The plane en-route to Nairobi, Kenya, had to return shortly after taking-off due to a transponder failure.
The plane landed uneventfully.
All people onboard remained unharmed.
Norwegian Air flight DY-7148 had to divert and make a safe emergency landing at Shannon Airport, Ireland, on May 30th.
The Shuttle Boeing 787-800, en-route from Boston, Massachusetts, to London, England, was diverted after it was refused to enter UK airspace due to unreliable transponder signals.
The plane landed uneventfully. All people onboard remained unharmed.
The plane resumed its flight 11 hours later.
Click to view full size photo at Airliners.net
Contact photographer Serdar Yorulmaz
What: Delta Airlines Boeing 767-300 en route from Chicago to Paris
Delta Airlines Boeing 767-300 en route from Paris to New York over Prestwick
Delta Airlines Boeing 767-300 en route from New York to Germany over Canada
Delta Airlines Boeing 767-300 en route from Dublin to New York (ferry flight)
Where: Atlantic
When: Feb 17th, 18th and 19, 2012
Who:
Why: While en route between Chicago and Paris, the plane’s transponder failed.
The same thing occurred on the Paris-New York flight on Feb 18;
and on the New York to Frankfurt flight on Feb 18 over Canada;
and on the Dublin to New York flight on Feb 19.
There has obviously been a problem here.
The transponder code (or “squawk code”) or altitude information is designed to help air traffic controllers to identify the aircraft and to maintain separation. The plane can fly without it, but what if the safety space is breached and there is an incident?
At least the last flight was a ferry flight, and on landing, the transponder is replaced, or whatever underlying factor that is causing this is corrected! The MEL (Minimum Equipment List) does have parameters for this.
Regarding the Gol jet that collided over the Amazon rain forest with an Embraer Legacy 600 executive jet owned by ExcelAire Service Inc. of New York: The GOL InvestigatIon has determined that the pilots of a New York-based executive jet had placed the transponder and collision avoidance system on standby before colliding with the Boeing 737 operated by GOL Linhaus Aereas Inteligentes SA on Sept. 29, 2006.
The Legacy landed safely but everyone on the GOL jet died.
Flight controllers failed to alert pilots that they were on a collision course and also did not notice the transponder was off.
The on duty flight controllers and the two U.S. pilots – Joseph Lepore and Jan Paladino have been indicted. They could get up to three years in prison.The pilots deny turning off the transponder. They claim to have been flying at the altitude designated by the air controllers.
ExcelAire says that “the transponder issue is a distraction from the true cause of the accident, which is an air traffic control system that put two airplanes on a collision course for about an hour.”