FYI, if the transponder was off, the ground control people would not easily be able to know the plane's altitude and so much of this story would be bogus. Transponders transmit altitudes -- or they used to. Hope I'm not badly out of date on this.
They're being setup already.
So how did they get assigned to 37,000ft? And why would they ignore an order to descend?
Transponders do transmit altitude information and that information is correct if the airplanes both had the correct altimeter setting (to barometric pressure, which at that altitude has to be set at 29.92).
My question is: isn't the required separation at the flight levels (above 18,000 ft.) supposed to be 2,000 ft. not 1,000 ft unless the aircraft and the airspace controlling facility are specially equiped for the lower separation minimum?
Also, the article states that the area where the midair occured was a communications blind spot, which is common in South America and over oceans, so how could the pilots have received, acnowledged and executed a change of altitude order?
And finally, I never felt comfortable flying around Central and South America as many pilots and airlines down there consider many of the rules as optional. I wouldn't put it past the airliner pilots cutting some corners as well. Hopefully the CVR/FDR will clear many of this up.
I've been out of the business for over a year so things might have changed over at ICAO.