Even if the STCA was turned off, isn't that only a last safety net?
I really feel for the Russians. Sure, they could probably have prevented the collision and the STCA would probably have done too, but how was the confliction set up in the first place?
It is a REGULAR occurance for traffic to miss r/t calls, sometimes it takes 3 or 4 attempts to get a response. At Heathrow yesterday a shuttle was out of contact for several minutes; they were about to scramble the Tornados. A few years ago traffic off BNN and LAM on conflicting tracks very nearly took each other out because BOTH were off the r/t for several minutes. If we are expecting things not to go wrong then we are being naive in the extreme and if we are building systems on that basis so that we can move more traffic then we are in for more of this.
I feel sick.
Point 4
