A residual a posteriori error estimator is proposed for two variational for
mulations of the transport equation, a Galerkin one and a Petrov-Galerkin o
ne. It is shown that the estimator related to the Petrov-Galerkin formulati
on has nit optimal order of convergence for an appropriate norm. The estima
tors are compared to the one proposed in [7] for the transport equation. (C
) 1999 Academie des sciences/Editions scientifiques et medicales Elsevier S
AS.