and the GOL mid air collision? GOL turned off their transponder...and flew at a different level.
On September 29, 2006, GOL Airlines Flight 1907 flying at 37,000 feet collided in midair with an Embraer Legacy business jet over the Amazon jungle in Brazil. The badly-damaged business jet landed safely at a remote military base, but the GOL Airlines 737 was damaged too severely and crashed, tragically claiming the lives of the 154 passengers and crew aboard that flight. In the immediate aftermath of that tragedy, Brazilian authorities initiated criminal investigations and prosecuted the pilots of the business jet and the air traffic controllers. The actions by those authorities stand as the most noteworthy example of government criminalization of an aviation accident and caused many in the aviation industry to re-evaluate and refine their post-accident response procedures.
whereas the elevation element is very accurate - azimuth not so. The relative bearing of the threat can be up to 30 degrees out leading to a high likelihood of misidentification.
That's why you follow RAs.
Concur, due to the latency in both aircraft reporting systems, it seems best to follow the RA as it wants to always point you away from the perceived threat. tactically, we wont even go into the spoofing available with ADSB.