read the following from the reporters article...consider if the 737 pilots reacted so quickly, as any of us might have, and the amount of control input, saving the Legacy, may have caused an accelerated stall/upset further dooming the flight.
do not misread this as anything against the 737 pilots or anyone else...high altitude flying with massive control inputs can be tricky.
head on, we are trained to both turn right.
fighter pilots are taught to turn and to keep enemy in sight
whatever the backgrounds, I think we can all understand why TCAS gives vertical escape maneuvers and not horizontal maneuvers (though TCAS 3 may have that).
if the 737 had pulled up, the belly might have hit the legacy, the 737 might have survived, dooming the legacy.
It is also time to revist recognition lights in cruise flight and not just at low altitudes ( landing lights on, a redesign of non retractable types).
again, do not consider this an attack on pilots, just a method for starting a debate on collision avoidance.
READ on:
A Brazilian military inspector standing by surprised me by his willingness to talk, although the conversation was limited by his weak English and my nonexistent Portuguese.
He was speculating on what happened, but this is what he said: Both planes were, inexplicably, at the same altitude in the same space in the sky. The southeast-bound 737 pilots spotted our Legacy 600, which was flying northwest to Manaus, and made a frantic evasive bank. The 737 wing, swooping into the space between our wing and the high tail, clipped us twice, and the bigger plane then went into its death spiral.
It sounded like an impossible situation, the inspector acknowledged.