O.K., here is my rational response based on this accident report. It is nightime, I am cruising along at high altitude in airspace where all aircraft are required to have transponders and most that do have transponders have two of them in case one fails. It is fairly quiet on the radio. My aircraft is equipped with an updated version of TCAS and I have been trained in how it works.
Therefore I know that they communicate with each other and in the event of a RA in my aircraft, the conflicting aircraft's TCAS will not give instructions to do the same evasive manouver. Because I follow aircraft incidents on PPrune and other forums, I am well aware that manouvering to follow an ATC instruction against the RA nearly caused the world's worst aviation disaster over Japan 18 months previously(link provided in my last post).
All of a sudden I get a TA with the TCAS display showing traffic at my altitude and converging from the left. Moments later ATC says traffic at two o'clock, descend immediately and nearly simultaneously, I get a RA saying to climb. There is no other traffic displayed on my TCAS display. I do the rational thing and follow the RA and everyone survives this conflict.
I know.......Maybe there is some military flight out there that has an emergency which just happens to be affecting his transponder at the very exact time that I am getting an RA. I'm sure there are all kinds of obscure scenarios that can be thought of. Conspiracy theorists do it all the time.
By the way, if in this scenario there actually was an intruder at my two o'clock with no altitude given as pointed out by ATC(perhaps due to mode C not working), I would not go opposite to the RA.
P.S. Sorry for calling you an aviation safety specialist. That was an error on my part.
Last edited by punkalouver; 2nd Oct 2007 at 03:26.