TCAS Should be mandatory on More aircraft

[Envirascape]

With the appearance that the NAS relies so heavily on the TCAS System, one would have thought that TCAS would become a requirement for pretty much all IFR aircraft.

Like a sparring match...VFR had Transponder on, IFR aircraft responds to RA.

There is constant reference by the minister and others that the system works after the avoidance of a near miss due to an action from an RA, however, what about the high performance Turbo Prop RPT aircraft that are not required to have TCAS installed. For example RPT aircraft like the E120 certified to carry 30 passengers, is just under the requirement for mandatory TCAS.

Brasilia crew and others in the same performance aircraft, dont have the ability to have the fail safe of a TCAS to alert them to traffic that they cannot see or hear.

Its bizare that Transponders are now mandatory above 10,000 should go for IFR aircraft require TCAS above 10,000 aswell. (Or at least some rule that requires RPT IFR aircraft above 15 seats to have requirement for TCAS)

Gaps are evident within the NAS, and is only a matter of time.

What happens when an E120 is in the same situation as the SAAB recently

[Capn Bloggs]

Envirascape,
TCAS for ALL IFR is fine if AOPA are prepared to help fund them. Why should Brasilia operators, who didn't need nor want one up until 27Nov, suddenly have to fit them (costing many thousands of dollars up front ,and more in ongoing maintenance) so they can avoid bugsmashers? What the hell is going on here? Have we got our priorities right or what? Is this affordable safety? Get the bugsmashers to get a clearance, get a radio or get the hell out of the way!
PS: If you think I am angry about this, then you're right.:mad:

[Voices of Reason]

TCAS and Safety

We agree that TCAS is a valuable safety tool – and where it is cost effective and justifiable to fit, it should be fitted. We also support the carriage and operation of secondary surveillance radar transponders – Mode C or mode S – to support the operation of TCAS.

BUT we DO NOT support the use of TCAS and adjunct transponders as an airspace design tool. We have enunciated this more forcefully in other threads.

TCAS is acknowledged by ALL leading aviation States, and by ALL leading aviation organizations and authorities, as a LAST LINE OF DEFENCE – not an aid to separation or traffic information. It is meant to be independent of the air traffic system – not a supporting concept.

Carriage and operation of transponders in the United States should NOT be assumed to be a fundamental support to TCAS and aircraft based traffic information to IFR aircraft – it is principally related to the extensive radar coverage in the continental United States – primary and secondary. The carriage and operation of transponders allows air traffic control to provide traffic information and collision avoidance advice as a part of the design of airspace in the United States.

Ask any expert in the United States if TCAS is a design tool, or if TCAS resolution is a good design and safety aid, and the answer would be a resounding NO!

We cannot stress strongly enough – if your airspace system is being “rescued” on a regular basis by TCAS observation and reaction, your airspace deign is fatally flawed, and it is only a matter of time (or statistics) until the ultimate sanction.

[Envirascape]

agreed,

however, just stating a fact where the NAS again has gaps.

Get rid of the NAS, so that there is no need for a reliance on a TCAS, whereas at present there is strong focus on an airspace model that is at present highly reliant on its use.

The old system was fine to operate aircraft like the brasilia without TCAS, hence its lack of requirement, however, now that crews can no longer rely on radio transmissions to pick up on possible traffic, nor the restriction on airspace to exclude possible encounters with traffic, but soley reliant on looking out the window for traffic at 250knots is at best just waiting for an event to occur.

As seen in great detail the number of near misses that have been averted due to the use of a TCAS does not bode well for high performance aircraft without TCAS.

Main reason for the airspace changes is to reduce costs and make user pay, which is exactly it...user ends up paying.

Like most things of compromise, take away costs from one side, and result in adding it to the other side.

[SM4 Pirate]

Main reason for the airspace changes is to reduce costs and make user pay, which is exactly it...user ends up paying. If only there was 'evidence' that NAS saves money... VFRs didn't pay to use enroute class C, before NAS and Post NAS they are in E, so no one knows they are even there, let alone charge for it. The user pays system is flawed (that's a whole other thread) but also has nothing to do with NAS.

I think that VOR is alluding to change the airspace and design principles. Relying on TCAS is a statistic waiting to happen; a statistic I would rather avoid.

I heard that TCAS is rated as 90-95% effective; whilst it will cause 5% more problems by reacting to 'false or inaccurate' information.

e.g. the crash in USA in 1995 (I think); where one aircrafts altitude was incorrect and TCAS issued a Climb RA to one aircraft which created the collision that would have otherwise missed by 1000 feet.

[Envirascape]

exactly

roll back nas

[skylane]

The whole NAS system smells of incompetence to me. As one of those so called RPT pilots who earn a living out flying unsuspecting pax from A to B, daily exposing them to some risks of a midair collision, I would like to know what warped mentality could design an airspace which allowed VFR aircraft to be able to enter and leave without a clearance whilst IFR traffic have to look out of the windscreen to find the traffic.

Then every time one of the unions representing either the pilots or the controllers objected to some aspect, they were immediately down cried as red raggers. who didn't know what they were talking about.

We were issued the worst bit of educational material right on the death knock, that really was a promo sales pitch. Shortly after the changes occurred two near misses happened! Strange that the RPT pilots and their unions said that this would happen. Fortunately one of the aircraft was fitted with TCAS. It would have been a vastly different story if it had been a non TCAS equipped aircraft.

When the midair does occur, who will stand up and take the blame? Who will accept responsibility and be tried for manslaugher for the deaths of passengers and crew. Will the airspace go back to doing what it originally designed to do - protecting regular public transport aircraft and their passengers from other aircraft.

The second rate citizens in Launceston and Hobart, together with Alice Springs can afford to be put at risk every time they travel, after all not many votes from those areas.

[89 steps to heaven]

The biggest problem with TCAS is the lack of positive identification of traffic. Every day when I pass traffic info to a TCAS equipped aircraft I get

"We have it on TCAS"

I sorry, but you don't. You may have a TCAS return that MAY be the traffic, but also it could be another aircraft all together that I am not aware of.

We also get

"We are passed the traffic on TCAS"

See previous comment.

Unless TCAS procedures are amended to require positive identification of all traffic, the best you have got is that you have a return on someone, but that it might not be the traffic you have received from ATC.

Finally, TCAS does not see all traffic. On occasion, I have passed traffic, showing on my display, only to have the TCAS pilot make comment that they do not have them on TCAS.:uhoh:

Be careful out there people.

[Sheep Guts]

I cant understand why you would buy even or contemplate buying a second hand EMB120 without TCAS anyway. Its the way of world NAS or not Guys. Lets not wind back the clock on technology aswell.
Think about it.

If you buy an EMB120 in the states secondhand, may be worth getting the TCAS fitted over there before bringing over, be that for any Hi performance Turbo Prop.

Where I fly, I am in Non- Radar enironment all be it in KIng Air 90 but I wish i had one, because even the Jet Jockeys in this hemisphere say on the radio where they are not.:rolleyes:

Australias airpsace may not be ready for NAS now, but surley we should be looking at TCAS more favourably. The airpsace in Oz is not going to get less busy is it. No progress without change( embracing technology). Remember how many people were knocking GPS 25 years ago, or have you all forgotten?


Sheep

[skylane]

Currently in Australia there is about 13 E120's without TCAS, plus any number of King Airs/Conquests etc.

For NAS to rely on TCAS as the primary seperation tool, it would mean a change of regs and all these aircraft would have to be retro-fitted at no small expense to the operator.

Just proves that within the Ministers aviation portfolio the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

[Kaptin M]

TCAS is a great back-up IF the other aircraft are fitted with a servicable, altitude reporting transponder - and it's switched on!

Under those conditions, TCAS makes pilots aware of the approximate location (and altitude, if fitted with a Mode C Tx), which working in conjunction with ATC might make a visual sighting possible. In my experience as a 2-crew airline transport operator, I would estimate that in a situation where ATC have advised us of traffic, and we have ID'd it on TCAS, and optimum visibility, the success rate of getting a visual sighting (with 2 pairs of eyes searching) is in the 85-90% range.
In other words, even when knowing EXACTLY where the other (opposite direction) traffic is we MISS 15-10%.

So much for the "see and avoid" theory proposed by our intrepid adventurer.

On another note, TCAS has recently COST this company a couple of million dollars! :confused:
How? One aircraft had been intermittently giving false RA's, then a few days ago a crew in that aircraft received an RA during climb....INCREASE RATE OF CLIMB...their response was to firewall the throttles, resulting in N1 overspeeds on 2 engines. :O

[EIGHHYOU PILOT]

If the regs aren't changed to reflect NAS reliance on TCAS, then operators will ignore the safety concerns due to cost (affordable safety?), and some may go as far as one large operator of the E120 and remove them from the aircraft that were already fitted with them, telling the pilots that they didn't need them as the regs didn't require them for that aircraft. You can realy see some safety oriented thinking on the part of management there.

[scarlet wimpernel]

See and Avoid?
I was flying in Canada back in 1995 when an Air sandy PA-31 and a Bearskin Metro 23 proved how effective the see and avoid system is. The two aircraft where flying in opposite directions from Red lake to Sioux Lookout, GPS direct. The Navajo sliced the metro in half in good VMC. 8 Fatalities. No SSR in that area, just see and avoid.
As always there where many factors contributing to the accident, GPS was pretty new in those days and the inaccuracies of NDB to NDB navigation (that we where used to) may have reduced the likelihood of this accident occuring. Also, at the time, the accepted collision avoidance procedure was to turn to the right, the PA-31 hit the Metro in a 45-60 degree bank, I guess they saw…but were unable to avoid. Here’s the full report if you’re interested:
http://www.tsb.gc.ca/en/reports/air/1995/a95h0008/a95h0008.asp

One very interesting quote:
Research conducted by the Lincoln Laboratory<4> during traffic alert and collision avoidance system (TCAS) flight testing showed that a pilot alerted to the presence of other aircraft visually acquired the other aircraft in 57 of 66 cases; the median range of visual acquisition was 1.4 nm. However, in cases where the pilot was not alerted to the presence of the other aircraft, visual acquisition of the other aircraft was achieved in only 36 of 64 encounters; in the successful encounters, the median acquisition range dropped to 0.99 nm.

57 out of 66 cases?
86% (just like Kaptin M said)
Neither aircraft had TCAS.
So 36 out of 64…56%!?:ugh:
:mad:Great.
Needless to say no one needs this kind of tragic loss of life, I sure hope it doesn't happen down here.

[Dog One]

Very true Scarlet W, how-ever our Minister for Qantas has read the report and on advice of his close aviation adviser who operates a Citation believes it can't happen in the new NAS airspace, as it has been designed and implemented by experts.