"David Cartwright" wrote in message
...

I think the original poster perhaps chose the wrong words. While it can't
be denied that the controller made a mistake, this mistake was an
understandable one given the circumstances in which he found himself
(working multiple desks, with some equipment out of action, etc). It could
be said that he also made a mistake by accepting the workload when he came
on shift and had it handed to him, but I don't know enough about the
circumstances and/or the relationship between staff and management to
comment on that.


Priority one in ATC is separation. He lost separation and all the equipment
needed to maintain it seems to have been working.



He was, however, not the only one who made a mistake. One realisation that
came from this accident, for instance, is that when TCAS and an ATC person
tell you two different things, you go with TCAS - which wasn't the case in
this incident as one pilot went with the ATC command. Similarly, it seems
that the ATC management were at fault by allowing a skeleton staff to run
such a crucial operation.


But TCAS and an ATC person weren't telling him two different things at the
time he responded to the controller's instruction to descend. The TCAS RA
came later.