An interesting and harrowing report. What I took from it was that the ATCO concerned was a fairly minor link in a horrifying chain of coincidental events that led to the disaster. Any one of a number of things could have broken that chain, but there are two which stick in my mind.
[list=1]The Russian Crew were trained, effectively, to follow an ATC clearance if an occasion arose where ATC and TCAS gave conflicting instructions, as is evidenced by the following:
"For the avoidance of in-flight collisions is the visual control of the situation in the airspace by the crew and the correct execution of all instructions issued by ATC to be viewed as the most important tool. TCAS is an additional instrument which ensures the timely determination of oncoming traffic, the classification of the risk and, if necessary, planning of an advice for a vertical avoidance manoeuvre." A very dangerous piece of training when practically the rest of the world knows that TCAS instructions always take precedence over ATC avoiding action if the two are not complementary.[/list=1][list=2]The ATCO was working on two separate consoles, using two separate microphones and two separate radar screens. This would be definitely NOT ALLOWED in the UK under any circumstances, as the ATCO must effectively leave an operational position to use another one. In a word, negligence, but only as a result of bad management. If two ATCOs had been on duty, the conflict would have been seen much earlier and would have been a non-event.[/list=2]
airship
Under the circumstances, if the ATCO had contacted the B757-200 first and instructed them to descend, the outcome would have been just a drama as opposed to a crisis with lethal consequences...
Why? Because this instruction would just happen to be in agreement with the RA that the 757's TCAS was issuing? What I'm trying to say is, it was a 50/50 chance that just became another link in the chain. Controllers have many skills, but clairvoyance is not one of them. The ATCO chose to descend the TU-154 because, as has been mentioned, it was required to descend for the next part of its journey. The Rules of the Air have no meaning in controlled airspace - I doubt the controller would have considered them in the seconds in which he made his decision.
ShooTheGap
what surprises me after reading the report is how with a seperation of 7nm on a scope displaying 80 nm he omits to pass essential traffic to the DHL
Never mind essential traffic, it should have been avoiding action. I have said on these forums before, and will say again, that best practice for ATCOs SHOULD be to issue avoiding action TURNS if there is any doubt as to whether the aircraft concerned are in a TCAS RA situation. And yet still, two years after Ueberlingen, the recommendation does not appear in the UK Manual of Air Traffic Services. All that appears is the glib statement,
"...a controller must not issue control instructions....which are contrary to the RA communicated by the flight crew." Unhelpful at best. Some pilots may take several seconds to report an RA, which is time in which the controller can get himself/herself into trouble. There are any number of controllers, even examiners, who would advocate vertical avoiding action over horizontal, because they have the mistaken belief that it provides the quickest solution. As has been seen, not the case if you're contradicting an RA that you don't know about.
LTP