PTR 175
As Flex33 said, while the rules of the air are the same, I think two things should be considered:
1) As with Flex's post, all TCAS avoidance manoeuvres are in the vertical plane, therefore it would not be difficult for it to become counter intuitive to bank in order to avoid traffic (although I would like to think that I would, irrelevant of the axis, always take the most appropriate avoidance action in a situation, you never know). Rules of the air are one thing but it IS hard to revert to type, especially if this poor (and embarassed) guy has spent at least the last 14 years climbing and descending in the sim to avoid traffic during TCAS training!
2) I think there is an element of sleep stupor here. Especially if you wake up, see Venus in front of you and are told that there's closing traffic. Not difficult to suffer from a bit of confirmation bias and see nothing but this enormously bright light straight ahead of you! It may become difficult, in this situation, to analyze the situation properly and apply any proper the rules of the air, or indeed training and revert to human survival technique number one - duck!
Chatting to my skipper last night he mentioned that a similar illusion had happened to one of our crews over the North Atlantic some years ago. I must say that I can imagine it's easier than people might think to do this.
There but for the grace of God fellas...