In a real court case, you would be offering ATC Watcher lots of money to say what he has to say.
Thanks Peter, I am indeed too naive, Capediem was also asking me in PM a lot more questions ( which I gave him ) .
I realize now that I could perhaps make a living out of this !
Now answering songbird :
A lot of things to comment upon in your post.
The easy ones :
First : the 29 seconds is indeed an average. That means some are sooner , but some are also taking longer or missed altogether.
On the sooner ones, you say after 9 seconds max for a radar return, this is not universal . The Zurich radar return was 12 seconds in Ueberlingen for instance .
Also many controllers always wait the second Mode C update to verify trend , as many small deviations are just garbling or aircraft altitude hold variations.
Second : In doubt why not ask the pilot if he is following an RA. : Why not indeed . Just that in case of imminent collision, as a controller, you are more likely to want to issue avoiding instructions instead of loosing precious seconds asking the pilot if he has a functioning TCAS and if he is following an RA.
Thrid :
I maintain that it is bad controllership if ATC prefer to ignore knowledge of RA's which affect the progress of a flight. Politique de l'autruche, the ostrich putting its head in the sand.
ATC
at the moment prefers to refrain from Downlinking RAs , not to ignore RA knowledge. On the contrary ATC urges pilots to report to ATC immediately if they are getting and following and RA. ( In Ueberlingen should the 757 crew had done so earlier , the outcome
might ( emphasis on might ) have been different )
A little more info ( to confuse you even more ) on RA downlink to justify IFATCA ( and my own ) position on RA downlink:
A very recent Bretigny Survey of a single Mode S radar messages show the following picture :
90% of RA downlink messages are false RAs not displayed in the cockpit, but are broadcasted. . Half of those were identified as coming from a special transponder manufacturer on certain Boeing 737s ( 51 airframes identified so far , mostly on the UK register ) and a solution for those is expected.
The other half are short false RAs whose reason is not yet understood.
Of the 10% that remains, a further study indicates the following percentages : in 20% the pilots actions are inappropriate, in 10% pilots are acting in the opposite direction of the RA, and only 70% are more or less followed correctly. this confirms other larger studies both in Europe and in the USA.
Now to answer you final questions :
Finally, I must say that I have never understood the lax attitude of the controllers' international organisation IFATCA vis-a-vis the possibility of getting technical life-saving improvements, which could to a high degree prevent a collision from happening.
No, IFATCA on the contrary has the correct approach to this. They believe that hastily introducing RA downlink for the wrong reasons ( The Japanese pushed this in ICAO after their JAL/JAL encounter) while there are still so many issues unsoved will create more additional problems than it solves.
I for one believe that downlinking RAs Mode S messages
at the moment will increase controller involvement and contribute to more confusion , or Ueberlingen type scenario.
IFATCA, instead of putting pressure on their administrations to provide them with the best possible technical information about TCAS RA's, kept pressing on legalistic argumentation about responsibilities and accountabilities.
This is a fundamental issue : valid for TCAS, but also for ADS-B and ASAS :
Who is responsible for anti collision and when.
Nobody has resolved this issue yet and will resolve it soon I think.
For the moment I am responsible for anti collision TCAS is only a safety net that i should not take into consideration when I work. ( I am even not sure/ aware who has a functioning one ).
If the pilot is coming on the frequency and say "Moving , TCAS RA , " I Know my responsibility ends and he takes over . ..,I do not think any regulator will change this on account of RA downlink. So this is why IFATCA wants the legal bit solved before getting the Downlinks on their radar scopes. Also, based on the current surveys , Mode S RA messages are full or garbage anyway.
We are not putting our heads on the sand. We have been burned already by a hasty and immature introduction of version 6.04 ,often without training , in life traffic. We have had Ueberlingen, so time for the Regulators to take their responsibilities I would say. I support IFATCA 100% on this one .
The ball is in EASA and the FAA camp.