One of the problems that TCAS has caused is putting the controllers in a situation where they don't know whether they should give instructions to an aircraft that they believe is responding to an RA. Reading the findings of the SkyGuide disaster, one of the recommendations was for controllers if they believe the pilots are responding to RA's is to pretty much shut up and wait for it all to be over, as by giving instructions you may make the situation worse.
The problem is firstly you are never sure if an RA is being followed as the pilot will usually tell us after he has carried out the avoiding action, secondly our radar info is behind real time, so we may be descending a guy back into a guy he has already climbed above, and finally it is not in our nature to sit on our hands and watch it all turn to "Kak"(sorry been hangin round Sth Africans too much
)
I do still feel that if we are going to make TCAS carriage mandatory (as it is here for all but the really light low stuff, which basically there is none of), then we need to all know the rules we are playing by. Either the pilots have discretion to decide whether they respond or we need to know that the pilots will always follow the TCAS and ignore ATC instructions. I go with the ignore us and always follow the TCAS completely. I understand Ferris's logic of there are cases where both visual etc. but there are also cases where one aircraft takes your advice, and the other one doesn't and when there is 20 seconds or less to decide, I would prefer to have some black and white rather than grey.
BTW Spod, on a previous thread you mentioned the old Rogue pilot. I do remember how he used to always need to divert right of track round weather which took him to WENDY (still makes me quiver when I type that name!!) rather than ARBEY. Amazingly the weather was only present when we were using RWY 34 in Melbourne. Also saw in another post, you're still sitting in the Crisper
The guys on TMA must be gonna drop off the perch soon! A few of them looked like they were close when I left
