But boy, oh boy. Say this to a believer and get ready to loose an afternoon.

yes, had they followed the tcas, the accident might have been avoided.

There it is. I’m glad we could finally come to an agreement. Thanks for the entertainment.

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Is that some kind of a faux pas? I don’t know who mentor pilot is

Yours wasn’t a question, it was a statement, and a wrong one. TCAS adherence wasn’t fundamentally changed after the accident in question, but it brought to light it’s importance.

So let’s come back to the original argument: following the erroneous instructions of atc over the TCAS resulted in the accident - if they had followed TCAS, like the DHL crew, they’d be alive.

Edit: posted two answers by accident. Deleted one

According to the wiki…

TCAS was a relatively new technology at the time of the accident, having been mandatory[Note 2] in Europe since 2000.

Two years prior to the accident, in Europe, where the accident happened.

them obeying the atc command was reasonable and expected course of action.

That’s incorrect, and is exactly why we train to ignore ATC commands and follow TCAS advisories. We don’t even tell ATC if we’re climbing or descending, simply “Aircraft XYZ, TCAS RA”

Had both aircraft followed those automated instructions, the collision would not have occurred.

That is right from the wiki.

I never claimed the pilots were “cowboys”, you made that up in your head. I simply said the accident was a result of not following TCAS, which at its core is correct. Of course there are multiple contributing factors, ATC being the largest, but my post was already getting long winded.

Let me add some context from the perspective of an airline pilot who is also is a company training captain.

All modern transport category aircraft are equipped with a system called TCAS, or Terminal Collision Avoidance System.

TCAS operates by interrogating the TCAS system of other aircraft in a defined proximity ring based on some variables like altitude and rate of closure and resolves a climb/descend/level command to each aircraft, which we pilots train regularly to execute. The system is a near perfect solution to deconfliction when collision is probable.

With daily average flights in the US alone around 45 000, the amount of “near misses” is an incredibly small percentage. In 15 years of flying TCAS equipped aircraft, I’ve had 5 actual TCAS RAs (RA stands for resolution advisory - the actual avoidance maneuver)

Another way to look at it is: when was the last mid-air collision in the US, or even the world involving TCAS equipped airliners? The only one that comes to mind is the DHL-BAL mid air in 2002, which was a result of the one crew not following the TCAS instruction.

This article can fuck right off.