According to MEL of the aircraft I've flown, it is allowed to dispatch with TCAS inop, but ATC permission has to be sought and in Europe it is usualy given.
larger cultural change needed to blindly obey a piece of kit contrary to an ATCO
That piece of kit is intended to save lives when conventional methods of aircraft separation have failed and that's what everyone needs to know, regardless of his cultural background. I find it hard to believe that russian peacetime culture puts obedience to authority above self-preservation. More likely the russian crew was never fully acquainted with the TCAS principles of operation and procedures to be followed in case of RA. Not their fault, mind you - it was fault of their trainning dept and Russian CAA.
At the time, my company SOPs were that a TCAS RA was to be followed unless the target could be identified and was no threat. That SOP has since changed removing the proviso. Other companies have done the same.
Mine didn't. Since we got TCAS in 2000. it was always policy to follow TCAS RA unless it sends you toward terrain, thanks to safety pilot who understood TCAS very well.
That TCAS then failed as well was unfortunate, but it was a relatively "immature" system
TCAS flaws have been highlighted as a result of this collision
It was not immature and it didn't fail over Ueberlingen - it worked as designed. My apologies for perhaps being narrow-minded, but I can't see flaws in TCAS itself in this case.
Sounds as though we may have some parallels here with the 1976 Zagreb collision..
Indeed, at ZAG ACC there were only 2 ATCOs covering consoles usualy occupied by 6 of them and just as Adria DC-9 was handed over from mid to upper sector an told to stop sqawking alt (per procedure at the time) one of them had to take physiological break. It didn't help much that the overworked remaining ATCO panicked and issued instructions to DC9 crew that lead to collission. He was later sentenced by Yugoslav court to 5 years in prison but was released after year and half, after retrial. Other controllers and ATC organzation were acquitted at the first trial.
And yet, something all too similar happened again.(Brazil)
Not quite similar. To have coordinated TCAS resolution advisory manuevre, there have to be two aircraft equipped with TCAS and S mode transponders. RA's can be issued against altitude reporting targets and with plain A mode there can only be traffic advisory. And if transponder is off (as it seems to be case in Brazil), TCAS is helpless.