Near miss near Mumbai

[Capn Bloggs]

AI pilot did well by looking for the aircraft that was cleared for the same FL she was passing through, but she could communicate about the possible conflict before that became obvious with TCAS/RA.

Don't be too quick to judge. An aeroplane that is 1000ft below you will appear to be well above you until about 5nm, then rapidly duck under you. Until you get really close, it is difficult to judge if you are actually going to hit them.

[ATC Watcher]

Only relevance to this was where the ATC staff has also been suspended as it seems to be he confused between the 2 crew as he thought he was speaking to the same lady.....

Jumping to conclusions based on a (very poor) journalistic report .
For in info in ATC we always suspend the controllers involved after an incident . This has nothing to do with who is confused or guilty. reason is twofold : to maintain safety as someone involved in an incident is always shaken , and secondly to allow them to make a proper statement while things are fresh.

These kind of incidents are generally based on miscommunication , that can be resumed best as : what level were they cleared to, what were the readbacks and what did the crew did input in their FMS. In modern ATC facilities where you have FMS downlink via mode S , those kinds of errors are spotted well before they become a problem , in those ATC units not equipped , ( like India I guess) TCAS is there to provide the last minute safety layer.
It worked well here. The rest is for the safety investigation.
And last , in my long experience both ATC and Flying , women are generally better because their ego is smaller .

[pax britanica]

maybe they should have a few more women journalists to accelerate the end of dark ages thinking across the board

[Herod]

ATC Watcher.

And last , in my long experience both ATC and Flying , women are generally better because their ego is smaller .

I agree. Further my post about them being excellent or dreadful, the two dreadful ones I recall did have big egos. The excellent ones really were, and most ended up as captains with major airlines.

[PaxBritannica]

Is the TOI story trying to imply that the Vistara co-pilot got the level change wrong?

[vilas]

TCAS although a well practiced procedure of not much skill but still in real life in VMC can be scary. So the captains deserve some credit because they couldn't afford to make a mistake. Indian media overhypes even a go around as lucky escape. The woman pilot bit also was OK when women started entering this profession. Today when India has 11% women pilots to males while the world average is around 3% the mention of pilot being a woman is actually derogatory. As if she wasn't expected but did it. Off course they do what it takes.

[_Phoenix]

An interesting point of view and a good description of the incident, here:
An incident story that turned into an accident