Maintain separation, and you'll do just fine. Take for instance the Chakri-Dadri disaster. Two planes hugging each other midair - catastrophe. One of the worst disasters in aviation history. The cause and effect ladder coming into play behind it is a whole different story altogether. What I wish to underline here is the fact that for the "health" of the aircraft and their occupants, you've got to maintain separation between them!
After that incident, the DGCA (Director General of Civil Aviation) made it mandatory for aircraft to carry on board ACAS/TCAS (Airborne/Traffic Collision Avoidance System) equipment. Making India only one of the few countries back then to have this rule in place.
The system works on the simple principle that if two aircraft were to collide they'd have to be at or about the same altitude AND be approaching each other. So how does it work? A transponder in each of the aircraft transmits its altitude, whenever it receives a Mode C interrogation. This, identifies the aircraft as well as makes it visible as a dot on the RADAR display at the control center. This information is also utilized by other aircraft in the vicinity, to calculate if they're on a collision course. If that is the case, it triggers an alarm. A few binary information is exchanged between the aircraft where the Collision Avoidance Computer calculates a best possible path to evade the conflict.
There's more to it..... but guess I should catch some sleep. Intricate details, I'll discuss later! Thanks for reading.
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