Greek TCAS incident & query re Automatic Collision Avoidance System
Apparently, there was a near miss today over the skies of Greece. I've posted the article below, which comes from government radio. No mention of aircraft type, but Olympic has a considerable number of 737-400s.
"The 116 passengers on board an Olympic Airlines plane en route from Athens to Dusseldorf via Thessaloniki were alarmed when the pilot was forced to make an abrupt manoeuvre, because according to the instruments, the plane was on a collision course with two fighter jets. A stewardess was lightly injured on the leg, while two passengers suffered shock. The plane, which landed as normal at 09:30 in Thessaloniki, is still at "Macedonia" airport until the injured stewardess is substituted by one of her colleagues. As per the Defence Ministry, two fighter jets (photo-reconnaissance phantoms), flying somewhere over the area between the island of Skyros and Thessaloniki at 18,000 feet, crossed paths over air lane Blue 1, where the passenger plane was traveling on, and came closer than international safety limits, thus activating the automatic airborne collision avoidance system. However, there was no actual danger of a collision. Still, the Ministry is running an investigation into the exact causes of the incident."
I just have a couple of curious questions. When this automatic system takes over, do the pilots get an aural warning, or are they taken by surprise? Is all of this done without the assistance of ATC, using only the plane's radar? Lastly, how does this system interface with the autopilot?