What some of you are trying to remind us is that the Swiss controller gave the Russian pilots a clearance to either descend, or climb (I can't remember), which was supposedly a contradiction of what the Tupolev crew needed to do. One person seems to know more about the tragedy's cause(s) than the European investigation team, or simply has a personal bias against all of Eastern Europe. Is there a fair possibility that the Russian plane's TCAS either quickly changed its first Resolution Advisory, or that the Russian pilot at the controls assumed that the controller had better information than what the TCAS indicated?
Is this not what the debate is about?
I've seen TCAS give us contradictory or quickly changing commands (RAs) at least twice, usually on downwind abeam (MSP) or on constant vectors towards a very busy hub airport (DFW), maybe due to aircraft in a turn with VNAV making a last-second level-off, as often happens? A pilot on a different fleet here told me that TCAS probably saved his 757 from a collision in night IMC, and the controller never acknowledged the other, much smaller aircraft around 10,000' near Baltimore, Dulles or DCA. One of our pilots was a KLM Cruise Pilot for two years and had a similar experience, but saw the approaching plane's lights at cruise altitude over a foreign country around 0200-0300: ATC never acknowledged the near-disaster.