Hey TonyWilliams, everything you posted was fact.

Where did I say pilots should ignore TCAS RAs?

I think if you read the rest of that post, you'll see where I wrote an informative post about why controllers sometimes run airplanes 500' above or below VFRs...I have absolutely had pilots from different companies respond differently to RAs.

My understanding of the event is that the controller had a visitor in the room at the time, against regulations, and someone else had been sent on a break at that time, also against regulations. Finally, there was an emergency phone in the room which was to be used by a German controller who saw the conflict coming and that the phone had been disabled somehow, preventing the emergency call from being heard.

I don't know all the facts and I'm not saying the accident still couldn't have been avoided with proper RA procedures by the Russian pilots but my understanding of the events was that the primary errors by the controller led to the situation in the first place.

Finally, as to the large airspace, European airspace is virtually dead at night as most of Europe's airports have night flight bans. Of course there are overflights but there is less night traffic in Europe than in North America.

Anyway, I'm not calling anyone here out on anything. At this day all we can do is learn from what happened and try to avoid the same errors in our own flight decks. Humans operate aviation (still) and humans make mistakes. We try to learn from them and avoid repeating them. That is the lesson here.

Great job today LGA folks and approach guys. Flew in and out of LGA today...not a fun day for it, but you guys did good.

Just got home from working a shift from hell at N90/EWR today. With JFk on the ILS 13L, and LGA on the ILS 13, very strong crosswinds made landing on 22L an adventure for most of the dayshift, and even when we tried rwy 11, we had more aircraft go around and divert than actual landings.

BTW on an earlier post I mentioned that when JFK and LGA go to the ILS 13 that it has very little impact on EWR I was referring to when EWR is landing rwy 22L or 4R. We can't land on ILS11 while JFK is on the ILS13L because a go around off RWY 11 (and boy we had a lot of those today) goes right into the JFK downwind on the river (they're at 2500 by the Verrazano bridge going up the river. We have to shut down JFK traffic (which we had to do several times during the shift) to run rwy 11's, and alternate airport hold/grounds stops. Same was going on with LGA and TEB all morning alternating holds/ground stops.

Total mess. It was one of the worst shifts I've had in a long time. I think we had more diverts than landings.

And as for that whole TCAS RA thing. Tony is correct. I wont speak for other facilities, but I know I personally try to either turn or stay more than 1000 feet from VFR traffic when and if feasible, however, due to the congested and complex nature of our airspace this is not always possible/practical. If I know that I'm going to be less than 1000 feet vertical, then I make sure to call out the traffic to both parties involved (assuming I am talking to the VFR), and alert you of any other traffic that may become a factor once you respond to an RA.

It is not uncommon to see an aircraft respond to an RA to known traffic in which both pilots have each other in sight, only to have that RA climb cause another conflict. One of the most common spots for this happens in the area just to the northeast of CDW where the MMU ILS23 localizer crosses the EWR and TEB downwinds. many times VFR departures out of either N07, or MMU, or CDW will climb below the bravo up to 2900, where they're "legal", but dangerous as hell, and force an RA climb of a TEB or MMU arrival into a EWR arrival, which sometimes has resulted in the EWR arrival to RA climb into one of our brezy departures going overhead. I filed a very interesting triple play TCAS RA NASA report not long ago with such an incident.

Here's what the flight crews have for guideance; the actual RA's corresponding audio message:

"climb, climb"

"descend, descend"

"climb, crossing climb, climb, crossing climb"

"descend, crossing descend, descend, crossing descend"

"adjust vertical speed, adjust"

"adjust vertical speed"

"monitor vertical speed"

"maintain vertical speed, maintain"

"maintain vertical speed, crossing maintain"

The actual TCAS Resolution Advisory (RA) Thresholds:

below 1000 feet MSL - RA inhibited-N/A
1000 - 2350 feet ------ 15 sec --- 300 ft
2350 - 5000 feet ------ 20 sec --- 300 ft
5000 - 10000 ft ------ 25 sec --- 350 ft
10000-20000 ft ------ 30 sec --- 400 ft
20000-42000 ft ------ 35 sec --- 600 ft
42000-above ---------- 35 sec --- 700 ft

Didn't say you did, however I admit, I probably only got to the "TCAS / SOP / don't know" part of your post.

Company procedures for an RA should be identical. How would you know what command the flight crew is receiving from TCAS? I posted the actual commands on an earlier post.

If it says climb, you click off the AP and manually pitch the plane up for climb. It's a one half G maneuver. TCAS doesn't give turns, only climb, descend, or stay level.

I have specifically not addressed the Traffic Advisory from TCAS, because it's not compulsory to follow.

This is actually a great myth in our industry. I say that because it's not an exact science by any means or accounts. The problem here's that I know for a fact that you guys have been led to believe that we can follow a 75 by as little as 3.5 miles as long as we're above his glide. Well, here's the problem with that theory, first of all, if you have any type of tail wind there's goes your higher glide "safety" zone. Second, I do have friends at CAL that fly the 75, and they'll tell you first hand, that they don't always follow the slope themselves, which again kills any margin of safety you think you get by flying higher. Another factor to consider is that sooner or later in order to land in the touch down zone we're going to have to catch that glide, well, if separation is lost, I can tell you from personal experience that a 75 will roll an RJ without any problems, it is quite possibly the most efficient wing design ever developed, trust me, I've gotten less wake from a 76. So in absence of separation, I won't fly the aircraft higher than I'm required as it has not made much of a difference in the past. I'll just advice of our inability to maintain the assigned speed based on separation. Shooting a near unstable approach visual or not, is really not in our best interest.


I completely understand that, however, I think we've reached a point where we're pushing the limits of both aircraft and airspace in order to accommodate the inadequacies of the planning and marketing departments at certain legacy carriers. I truly hope that an accident is not necessary to address these issues with separation. Once again thank you for taking the time to answer.

go

We're not asking for you to fly 3.5 miles behind them, but if you could do around 4.5 or so on a visual it'd help out a lot. If you're going to stay at 5 miles or more...meh, I might as well just give my usual IFR clearance, which again goes to show why some of us are reluctant to give visuals sometimes.