During my interview I was asked some questions that were directly related to ATC situations. I´m curious about the pro´s take on one of them, not related to the interview but how one would handle the situation in real life.
"Two aircraft are approaching head on but on different FLs. The lower one requests a climb that would mean that it would cross the others FL. What would you primarily base your response on?"
I sometimes have a tendency to overanalyze things and therefore try to go with my first thought which in this case was to look at the distance between the aircraft since that wasn´t given in the question. I figured that if they are very far apart it´s safe to issue the climb, if they are too close I´d wait until they´d pass each other. How close is too close? I don´t know, I´m just a wannabe ATCO
They only wanted my short answer without an explanation so I don´t know what that question was looking for, could be whether I could think of something logical at all or just go blank.
Anyways, I can see that such a situation is farily complex (or perhaps not) even if one knows the distance and closure rate of the two aircraft. I´m assuming that a FL change is not done at the same rate as a normal climb since the pilots don´t want the transition into and out of the climb to be too abrupt, perhaps a sedate twist of the VS knob to give 500-1000 ft/minute? Since that is unknown to the ATCO in advance what do you base you decision on? A very large marginal of safety? First separate laterally, then climb?
Sorry if this is too OT.