Traffic! Traffic!

Stephen Pope

Monday, January 09, 2012 at 08:02 PM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

The 2002 midair collision over southern Germany, caused by a series of human errors including a controller's mistake and pilots overriding TCAS instructions, underscored critical safety vulnerabilities and led to further enhancements in collision avoidance systems.
Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance Systems (TCAS), particularly the advanced TCAS II with its resolution advisories, have continuously evolved (e.g., Change 7.1 software) to effectively prevent midair collisions in commercial aviation by providing clear evasive commands.
The upcoming ADS-B mandate (effective 2020) will transition air traffic surveillance to a more precise, satellite-based system for nearly all U.S. aircraft, promising increased safety, closer separation, and new functionalities like weather data and runway incursion alerts.

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(January 2012) Sitting in the darkened area control center in Zurich, Switzerland, the air traffic controller on duty could scarcely believe what he was seeing on his radar screen: Somehow, two airliners in his sector cruising at precisely the same flight level were just miles apart on a collision course over southern Germany. Keying his microphone, the controller hurriedly commanded one of the aircraft, a Russian jetliner, to descend. The urgency in his voice conveyed the seriousness of the situation.

In the cockpit of the Tupolev Tu-154M passenger jet en route from Moscow to Barcelona, the pilots hesitated for a moment before initiating a descent from their assigned altitude of FL 360. Seconds later, the Russian jet’s TCAS issued a traffic resolution advisory commanding a rapid climb.