Reaction to TCAS RA

[anotherthing]

You should get an acknowledegment of your RA. Because of the nature of an RA, you might not get traffic information, to tell the truth it matters not an iota as you have to follow the action anyways.

If ATC was busy, as you state in your first sentence, then all they should have done was 'rogered' you.

The call you gave was "TCAS RA", that has not changed. Discussing/informing ATC that you are going to file an ASR on RT is not needed, nor professonal. In the UK at the very least, ATC must fill in a report for TCAS RA, and we expect aircrew to do the same.

Saying you will do so on busy RT does not help the ATCO, especially as a lot of the time it is a nuisance RA. Believe me, when as an ATCO you know you have done nothing wrong, and you hear someone call 'TCAS RA', it can be very confusing for a couple of seconds, as you check and double check the clearance you gave on your flight progress strips.

The call "C/S TCAS RA" is not unambiguous, and if said with the correct annunciation/urgent tone, i.e. more prominently than a standard RT call, it is more than sufficient for the job. Putting a PAN PAN PAN prefix is not a good idea.

The procedure works fine as it is, Spanish ATC were busy as you state, when it happened. Changing procedures in RT to cover either poor procedures, poor technique or the lack of response of one controller is not the way ahead. Addressing the problem by speaking to the controller/reviewing procedures is what should be done or inyour case filing an ASR..

I hope in your ASR you stated very clearly that you received no response from ATC and that in your opinion it was busy. Furthermore, I do hope you mentioned that Spanish was being used on the RT as well.

I see a lot of instances now from the ATC side whereby when someone has an incident, the 'cover your arse' attitude of management is to make up some silly new procedure that doesn't actually enhance safety, but of course it means if someone in the future has an incident management can turn round and try to pass the buck and apportion blame.

What should be happening is having a chat with the controller involved and ensuring they know what went wrong, why, and how not to let it happen again.