West Coast,
This assumes you are looking at the aircraft that is the threat.
I am truly amazed that your company SOP permits non compliance based on a visual spot. It harks back to the early days of TCAS. Later versions (especially change 7 onwards) don't generate anywhere near as many nuisance RAs, and even then *Accurate* compliance should only deviate your flight path by a few hundred feet.
I remembar a particular incident, reported in the FAA TCAS transition Program back in about '98. The crew got a TA, had visual, were happy they were separated. Then they got an RA, the skipper didn't think it was needed but flew it anyway, at which point a second aircraft missed them vertically by 300'. It had been co-altitude.
There are situations where non compliance can be justified, I've talked about them here many times over the years, but a visual spot is not one of them.
It is staggering to me, 15 years later, that such SOPs still exist.
Even more so it staggers me that this far down the road guys keep turning up in this forum who quite clearly do not know how TCAS works nor the internationally agreed best practice for how to use it. I'm not having a go at the individuals - good for them for asking - but it is a damning indictment of their training and standards department that they have to come here to fill the cracks in their training.
I recently took a break from flying my desk and refreshed on a medium passenger jet, as it happened I had the opportunity to do the entire course alongside some new entrants at a company I do some consulting for. TCAS barely got a mention. I guess we need some more mid-airs before regulators will actually check that the required theoretical and practical training is actually being done.
Last edited by Capt Pit Bull; 17th Jan 2013 at 10:34.