The system isn't, umm, systematic!
The more experience I have the less I know.
The nice thing about most of my long range flights were that I was either in an unpressurised light piston twin at either nine or ten thousand feet with no oxygen or else in this Dornier 328 at its maximum altitude, 34 or 35 thousand. I didn't have to step-climb the Dornier so I would just go for F340 or F350 and that was that part sorted. In other words there was very little decision-making in the vertical plane required.
Then I just had to worry about comms. We always used that in-flight broadcast procedure on 126.9, we had a good HF and there was almost always some helpful airline crew above us somewhere to give us a relay.
I think that one trip Lagos, Nigeria-Gao, Mali-Marrakech, Morocco was the only one where I really had trouble with lost comms, on the sector from Gao. The thing was that it was a relatively long, maximum-range leg out over the middle of nowhere when contact with someone, anyone would have been good to have. We were flying upwind and we were lucky the winds were light. You know how you can pick up a wind change and that would have caused a diversion, when I would have needed to communicate.
As it happened we had no problem with the wind but I hate that feeling you get when the "holes in the cheese slices" start to line up.
We had a big discussion about flying offsets, since the Honeywell FMS made that simple. I have my doubts but ours was a very small operation so that we couldn't have a wide-ranging discussion about this.
I just don't like to see systems being tinkered with even when the basic premise is obviously sound. In fact it is exactly like the way you start out following a prominent track feature VFR, isn't it? Everyone stays off to the right.
That crash over the Amazon, well, yes, you could argue that "If the two aircraft were offset then it would not have happened." Err, yes, but... If perhaps both crews had been keeping a proper lookout in VMC as we are told to do, if perhaps the bizjet crew had clarified exactly which flight levels they were expected to use, if perhaps they had tried harder to establish comms and if perhaps they had not seemingly and inadvertently switched off their transponder, if Brazilian ATC had done a better job...
I don't think we can just take this one as a clear call for flying offsets because I don't think it is that simple. Once the official report is out then we can study the conclusions and say better whether offsets are the way to go for everyone.
Of course as long as you stay within the airway there's no legal barrier to flying offsets now and I cannot think of any objection to that other than my vaguely philosophical one.
One no-brainer that needs more emphasis is keeping that transponder on even when there is no radar. I still come across guys in Africa who say, "What's the point?" not having a clue about the recommendation for using the transponder or why. TCAS to them is just something "other guys" have.