The study says downlinking could prevent 91% of incidents in en-route airspace, in which controllers pass instructions to an aircraft while unaware that it is subject to an ACAS advisory. In terminal airspace the proportion is around 88%.
But the downlink is less effective in allowing a controller to change a pilot’s response, because such intervention requires a relatively long sequence of events to take place within a limited time window. In en-route airspace controllers would only be able to affect pilot behaviour in 12% of encounters, and this falls to just 5% in terminal airspace.
Source: Flight International
