MIDDY... BS! Sounds like you should have been a lawyer.. That PIC crap is true but.... doesn't mean ATC can't help prevent accidents.. Yes they CAN turn their back and make coffee- Tell that to the families.. They CAN also look out the window... Choices.. We help them with see and avoid/TCAS/Accepting the visual; they can help us too.. Who's in charge, to me, comes in the tie breaker decision otherwise speak up if you see something wrong and sort it out on deck! NOW I do agree that in this case it does appear that the crew was AFU (Rumor I got was that morning they also initially went to preflight the wrong jet... So the SA meter was definately pegged low).
I think you just kind of reiterated my point. Either way, ATC
should have been on game enough to stop this, but in reality that is not always possible. Maybe something pressing was distracting the contoller in the tower....maybe the controller assumed that the Comair crew was experienced enough to not get themselves in this sort of situation....maybe 1000 things could have happened to prevent the controller from averting this situation. Just to illustrate my point about PIC responsibility, every time I go flying (even if I'm IFR in VMC) I keep an eye out for other a/c....most of the time ATC calls traffic long before I see it, but there have been about 3 instances that I can remember where they haven't which all could have ended in fatalities.....1) short final on ILS approach to uncontrolled field (under ATC radar contact), some guy cuts right in front of me (less than 1/4 mile) in spite of my advisory calls for the previous 15 nm--I'm forced to evade in marginal VFR and go missed while ATC was twiddling its thumbs wondering what happened; 2) transiting through eastern WA, wrong alt/heading VFR traffic on Victor airway comes w/n 1 nm same altitude and forces my a/c into diving evasive maneuver while under "VFR flight following"--with no ATC traffic advisories; 3) (not quite as unnerving as previous 2 instances) transiting from NAS Lemoore to R2508 in flight of 2 Rhinos, we pass opposite direction from Citation jet well inside FAA a/c seperation minimums while presumably under ATC control (not entirely sure how you military aviator types work your clearances but I will venture to guess that we were on some sort of IFR clearance at the altitude we were cruising at)
All of these are examples of situations where ATC was doing its job, but wasn't necissarily providing a reliable back-up for us/me. Only PIC attention to detail averted possible mishaps
That said, I think everyone would benefit from a more staffed ATC community and I agree that the controller by all means
should have stopped this from happening. If I were a family member of one of those 49 people, I would be more than a little angry at the "system". But in the blame game, responsibility falls where the written law puts it, and (w/o sounding like too much of a lawyer) I think in this case the law would find the aircrew at fault. I see ATC's failure as more of a broken link in the chain--a contributing factor, rather than the original cause of the incident.
