Bodie, I said they didn’t get traffic on the ground.
They got traffic on departure. 2 minutes before they collided.
This is pretty misleading. The ATSB report only says "
At 1119, the air traffic controller passed traffic information to AEM about JQF departing from Mangalore. At 1122, JQF made a departure call from Mangalore, advising ATC of a planned climb to 7,000 ft. "
JQF had clearly made a taxy call on the area frequency - how else would the controller have known about the JQF being traffic for AEM???. The taxy call was made a 1111 or 13 minutes before the collision. It is highly likely that there was some mention to JQF about AEM in response to the taxy call, even if it was just mentioning that there was traffic with details to follow.
Both aircraft had filed IFR plans. Both were flying in accordance with their plans and or instructions by ATC. The filed plan of JQF and its climb to 7,000ft clearly put it in conflict with AEM's cruising level of 4,000 ft. Both aircraft has ADS-B transponders. AsA had returns from both aircraft's ADS-B transponders. The system had all the information it needed at predict that there was a conflict 13 minutes before the accident. Once the aircraft were airborne the ADS-B returns proved it, but the ATSB report gives no intimation that the ADS-B returns triggered any warning to the pilots.
The class G self separation of IFR aircraft debate is frankly bureaucratic masturbation. The aircraft were in IMC. See and be seen doesn't work outside the confines of air conditioned meeting rooms.
The problem with the preliminary report is that it does not give any radio transcripts. The report has cherry picked the information that it wanted to present. We don't know what was in the preceding calls. But its clear that there were preceding calls.
The ATSB has 2 credibility problems. The first is (as has been noted by others) the ATSB has a history of changing radio transcripts and secondly that it has a history of passing draft reports to AsA & CASA for comment before publishing the report AND making amendments requested by AsA & CASA.
Those of us who fly IFR have paid to install the mandatory ADS-B equipment to "improve safety" and we pay air navigation charges on a user-pays basis to have a controller oversee the flight. We do this to avoid exactly the situation of this accident.