ATC saves the day - how widely is this being reported?
The following is a bit of digression from the article linked above but actually sort of relevant.
I've seen some articles recently extolling the merits of NAV Canada & how they should be a model for the privatization of the FAA. I think it is possible for the FAA to be converted to a semi-autonomous corporation like NAV Canada but I am far more confident that the current leadership in DC is not competent to make that transition.
One of my favorite examples is to point out that all of Canada combined does 4 million operations a year while if you draw a circle with a 25 mile radius centered on Phoenix Sky Harbor airport, within that circle are 2 million operations a year of which 75% are GA flights.
And then the story above shows up.
It's a pity that virtually no-one who hasn't actually worked traffic on the system understands what we really do. We aren't just traffic cops. We are not just fire responders waiting for a fire to break out. We do failure analysis & then prevent it from occurring. When failure occurs anyway, we resolve it & prevent disaster.